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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap. Copyright No.. 

Shelf. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Coming Democracy 



The 
Gomin 




By Orlando J^^mith 



^1 

r/ ^ 



•^ 



New York 

The Brandur Company 

220 Broadway 



TWO COPIES RECEiVE._». 

Library of GtRgett^ 
Ufflati of tki 

APR 1 7 1900 

bt«(fliUr of Copyrlg|f4i 






Copyright, 1900, by 
ORLANDO J. SMITH 




ftgGOND OOP'^t 



9tof 



Contents. 



PAGE 



11 



I. A Record of Official Corruption Un- 
EQUALED In Any Other Land or 

Time 

II. The Assumption That Our People 
Have Degenerated Cannot Yet 
Be Granted 

III. The Principle of Democracy Can Be 

Sound, and Its Machinery Un- 
sound 

IV. The Denials of Freedom In Our Or- 

ganic Law — In Forbidding Change 
the Fathers Forbade Progress . 14 
V. The Minority Can Defeat the Ma- 
jority, AND the Government Can 
Defy the People .... 18 
VI. The Cumbrous, Complicated and Irre- 
sponsive Nature of Our Govern 

MENT 

VII. Power Must Abide Somewhere— De- 
nied to the People, and Restrict- 
ed In Congress, It Has Been Ab- 
sorbed BY the President . . 26 

VIII. In England the Constitution Is the 
Will of the People— The Govern- 
ment Responds Promptly to the 

People 30 

IX. Our Government Is a Train Behind 
Time, a Clock Which Seldom 



23 



CONTENTS. 



PAOB 



Strikes the Hour, a Ship Which 
Disobeys Its Captain ... 34 
X. The Natural Crops of an Irresponsive 

AND UnPROGRESSIVE REPUBLIC ARE 

Patronage, Privilege and Corrup- 
tion 37 

XI. Our Armies of Spoils, as Zealous, Aspir- 
ing AND Invincible as the Legions 
Under Napoleon at Friedland . 39 
XII. Unity, Simplicity and Responsibility — 
No Human Organization Has Ever 
Prospered Under a Double-Headed 
Management 43 

XIII. The Free Man's Ballot — One Vote for 

One Cause and for One Candi- 
date 48 

XIV. The Voter Makes His Own Nomination 

— Bossism Is Abolished and Politi- 
cal Machines Are Broken . . 55 
XV. Treachery Is That Offense Which 
Ranks a Little Lower In the 
Minds or Men Than Any Other 

Crime 60 

XVI. In Answer to the Charge That the 
People Are Unpatriotic, Untrust- 
worthy OR Corrupt ... 64 

XVII. Honest Systems Produce Honest Re- 
sults, Right Systems Right Re- 
sults, AND Wrong Systems Wrong 
Results 69 

XVIII. The Defiance op the Will of the Peo- 
ple Produces the Revolutionist 
AND the Anarchist ... 72 

XIX. The Nation Which Confides Its Gov- 
ernment to Four Antagonistic 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Powers Is Not a Democracy— It Is 

AN Anarchy 76 

XX. Government on a Businesslike Basis — 
The Election an Appeal to the 
Reason and Conscience of the 
Voter . . . . . . 81 

XXI. Corruption and Misgovernment In 
Washington Are Due Largely to 
THE Pressure op Selfish Local 

Interests 87 

XXII. The System of Setting Up One Man to 
Run Against Another for Office — 
The Imperial Power of the Saloon 91 

XXIII. The Needs of Democracy Will Pro- 

duce In Freedom Sincere and Pow- 
erful Men to Serve the People . 95 

XXIV. Once |In Forty or Fifty Years a Free 

People Must Arouse Themselves, 
OR the Moral Man Would Die . 99~— 
XXV. The Trusts Are Built on the Rock op 
Economy — The Power of Combined 
Wealth Is Yet In Its Infancy . 103 

XXVI. All of the Industries Fitted by Their 
Nature for Combination Will Be 
Forced Into the Trusts . . 108 
XXVII. The Inevitable Evolution op All 
Trusts Into One Trust, or One 
Federation of Trusts . . . Ill 
XXVIII. The Great Corporation Is Forever at 
the Zenith of Its Powers, Serene 
In Imperial Strength and Immortal 
Life 116 

XXIX. The Issue of Combined Wealth Presses 
Upon and Menaces Us — The Line 
OP Classes 122 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



-y 



XXX. The People Are Stronger Than the 
Trusts — The Weak Must Forever 
Give Way to the Strong , . 127 
XXXI. In Answer to Those Who Distrust an 
Expansion of the Freedom and 
Powers of the People . . . 132 
XXXII. The Coming Age of Honesty and Jus- 
tice — Those Who Serve the Public 
Will Serve Faithfully . .136 

XXXIII. Before the End of the Twentieth 

Century a City In America Will 
Have a Population op Twenty 
Millions 139 

XXXIV. The City of the Future — On the Face 

OF This Planet There Is Room for 

All .143 

XXXV. Public Enterprise Will Rebuild Old 
Cities and Construct New Ones 
FOR the People .... 148 
XXXVI. The People Will Not Seek Refuge 
From Old Forms of Oppression In 
New Forms of Despotism , . 151 
XXXVII. Extortion and Monopoly Will Cease 
— Man Will Get What He Earns ; 
No More and No Less . . . 155 
XXXVIII. We Shall No Longer Transmit Care 
AND Fear to Our Unborn Chil- 
dren — Peace, Freedom and Inde- 
pendence . . , , . .158 



The Coming Democracy 



I. 



A RECORD OF OFFICIAL CORRUPTION UN- 
EQUALED IN ANY OTHER LAND OR TIME. 

WE hear much in these times, and in 
this Eepublic, of the failures of 
Democracy. In fact, there are 
some manifestations here of a reaction against 
Democracy. 

Many of our people have lost faith in the 
aspirations and ideals cherished universally in 
the youth of the Eepublic ; a very large num- 
ber look upon universal suffrage as a failure ; 
and even those most passionately devoted to 
the principles of Democracy are greatly dis- 
satisfied with the condition and results of pop- 
ular government in these later days. 

The reasons for these changes in public senti- 
ment, and for the great anxiety concerning the 
future of free government, are apparent in the 
fact that public business is transacted with much 
less efficiency, economy and integrity than is pri- 



6 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

vate business, and that corruption or profligacy 
is manifest in nearly all branches of the public 
service. 

The management of our cities is usually 
wasteful and unintelligent, frequently corrupt, 
and sometimes criminal. Public franchises of 
great value have been granted for inadequate 
considerations, and sometimes mthout compen- 
sation. Public officials have been convicted of 
bribery and of other forms of corruption, and 
systems have been disclosed by which large 
numbers have participated in the profits of the 
meanest forms of vice. 

In the state governments the influence of the 
lobby, in antagonism to the interests of the 
people, is always felt, and is frequently domi- 
nant. The king of the lobby is sometimes the 
most important man in the state. He holds a 
position of profit and dignity ; he rules the legis- 
lature and controls the governor, and even the 
courts have been known to obey his will. 

The history of the national government for 
more than thirty years has been in the main a 
record of the granting of special privileges, im- 
munities and subsidies to the strong, and against 
the interests of the mass of the people — of land 
grants and money grants to great corporations ; 
of special taxes for the benefit of favored in- 
terests; of special deposits of the public funds 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 7 

in privileged banks, and of secret arrange- 
ments by which financial syndicates have made 
unfair profits in placing the issues of govern- 
ment bonds. 

It is a record of favoritism, profligacy and 
corruption which has been unequaled in any 
other land or time. 



II. 



THE ASSUMPTION THAT OUR PEOPLE HAVE 
DEGENERATED CANNOT YET BE GRANTED. 

T has been frequently suggested, in expla- 
nation of these remarkable developments, 
that the American people have degener- 
ated, and are suffering from the decay of patri- 
otism and public spirit. This theory is seri- 
ously entertained by many men of intelligence. 

'^ It is a philosophical principle," they assert, 
*' that a government is as good or as bad as the 
people who make or tolerate it. A corrupt 
state, a plutocracy, a despotism, can exist only 
by the consent of the people. 

" Our government is corrupt in all its parts. 
The people could change it if they would. That 
they do not change it is evidence that they are 
satisfied with it. The source of the decay of 
the state is in the degeneracy of the people 
who tolerate it." 

This theory should not be lightly accepted, 
nor lightly denied. Races and nations do reach 
inevitably a point where progress ceases and 
decadence begins. It is not impossible that 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 9 

we are approaching that period in our affairs, 
though there are many reasons for doubting 
this conclusion. 

The degeneracy of a people is probably never 
revealed in one phase only of their activities. 
It has not been claimed that our people are suf- 
fering from decay in any quality save in public 
spirit. In all other respects the American peo- 
ple rank at this time as being active, enterpris- 
ing, daring, quick-witted and aspiring in a 
marked degree. 

ISTor is it likely that the decline of patriotism 
and public spirit would become manifest among 
us in a brief period. It is now only thirty-five 
years since the close of our civil war. In the 
life of a race, this interval is a short one. 

It may be doubted that men have shown in 
any contest more of the spirit of sacrifice, or 
greater endurance, tenacity and patriotism, 
than the American people displayed during 
that conflict. It is not possible that the chil- 
dren of the men of 1861-5 have in so short a 
time become degenerate in public spirit. 

Neither is it true literally that a government 
is always exactly as good or as bad as the peo- 
ple who make or tolerate it. It cannot be 
asserted that the jpeojple make a government 
unless the state be in itself a true Democracy 
— a government which responds promptly and 



10 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

completely in all of its parts to the will of the 
people. 

In a state so organized the government would 
reflect the good and evil, the strength and 
weakness, of its people. 

Civilization has not yet developed that per- 
fect form of Democracy. Control of the state 
by the people is still hampered by constitu- 
tional barriers, and by the survival of many 
forms of despotism and privilege. It is true 
that the right of revolution always exists, but 
this right is rarely exercised save under gross 
and long- continued provocation. 

It must be admitted, on the other hand, that 
our spoils system is nearly as old as our gov- 
ernment, and that it has grown and strength- 
ened under our toleration. It is possible also 
that the strife for wealth, in which we have 
been engaged so fiercely in these later times, 
has dulled somewhat the public conscience. 

Upon the whole, however, it would appear 
that our people have not borne misgovernment, 
in its more flagrant forms, long enough to in- 
dicate a serious decline in public spirit. We 
are a patient people. Our endurance has not 
yet been stretched to its full limit. 



III. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF DEMOCRACY CAN BE SOUND, 
AND ITS MACHINERY UNSOUND. 

IF, however, the present debased condition 
of public affairs is the fruitage of Democ- 
racy, the result of trusting the people too 
far in the control of the state, then it will be 
impossible to claim that Democracy has been 
a complete success, or to deny that in many 
important respects it has been a failure. 

Before this conclusion can be granted, we 
must give full consideration to the fact that 
our system is not the only possible form of 
Democracy. 

As there are good and bad steam engines, 
reapers and automobiles, good and bad methods 
of farming, good and bad systems of charity, 
codes of justice and forms of religion, so there 
may be good and bad systems of Democratic 
government. 

As religion may be perverted, so Democracy 
may be perverted. A Democratic government 
can assume many varying forms, some of which 
will be good and some bad. 



12 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

A chain is as strong only as its weakest link. 
A great machine may be a failure through a 
defect in its most insignificant part. The weak 
link does not prove that the chain cannot be 
made strong; nor the defect in the machine 
that it must be a failure. 

The principle of Democracy is one thing, and 
the machinery by which Democracy can be put 
into practical use is another thing. The princi- 
ple may be sound, and the machinery unsound. 

Things are not always true to their names. 
A government may be called Democratic, and 
yet not be really Democratic. 

We are sixteen millions of voters. One mil- 
lion, perhaps, are interested, through spoils or 
privilege, or the expectancy of such favors, in 
bad government. The other fifteen millions 
are interested in good government. 

The disinterested voters almost universally 
denounce hotly the evil tendencies and develop- 
ments in public affairs. Even those intrenched 
in political favor rarely defend more than their 
own special form of privilege. The attitude of 
the disinterested people is not that of content 
or of approbation; it is the attitude of indig- 
nation against oppression, and of rage because 
of their own helplessness. For helpless they 
are, or seem to be. 

Subtle systems of oppression have been de- 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 13 

veloped wMck defy the people. Apparently 
these systems are growing stronger, and the 
people weaker. 

A Democracy is a state which is ruled by a 
majority of its own people. A state in which 
fifteen millions of disinterested voters are ruled 
by one million of mercenary voters is appar- 
ently not a real Democracy; something must 
be wrong with its machinery ; some link must 
be defective, some wires crossed, or some wheel 
misplaced. 

Let us now go down to the foundations of 
our system of Democratic government to ascer- 
tain if there be not some flaw or defect in its 
construction. 



lY. 



THE DENIALS OF FREEDOM IN OUR ORGANIC 
LAW-IN FORBIDDING CHANGE THE FATHERS 
FORBADE PROGRESS. 

OUR form of government was devised 
by the most courageous group of re- 
formers and patriots of whom we 
have any record — the great figures of our revo- 
lutionary and constructive period from 1T76 to 
1789. 

They had disestablished the church, abolished 
the throne and the last vestige of hereditary 
privilege, and asserted the equal rights of all 
men in tones and terms which will kindle the 
hearts of free men forever. 

The fathers of our Republic reformed or 
abolished everything that in their view called 
for change. They broke up the established 
order from its foundations and built a new 
structure. Having finished their work, they 
incorporated in the organic law provisions 
which have made change difiicult and almost 
impossible. 

The fetters which they placed in the organic 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 15 

law are called the checks and balances of the 
constitution — the two houses of congress, the 
one representing the people, the other the 
states; the veto of the executive; a president 
with more power during his term of office than 
any constitutional monarch, and a supreme 
court holding for life. These are the conserva- 
tive influences in the constitution intended to 
prevent change without due consideration. 

But progress is change, and in forbidding 
change the fathers forbade progress. In pro- 
viding against the possibility of mistakes they 
fixed in our political system the greatest possi- 
ble error — the inability to correct a mistake. 

They feared reaction — that the people might 
even go back to king-rule. They did not see 
that in forbidding the people to go backward 
they restricted them from going forward. 

They lived in a simple age. They had no 
conception of the possibilities of steam, of the 
modern corporation, of the combinations of 
great capital, or of our later methods of politi- 
cal organization. When the constitution was 
ratified the largest city in America contained 
only 33,131 persons. 

Why should we not have the right to make 
mistakes ? Are we not educated by our errors ? 
Even the fathers stumbled. Their constitution 
guaranteed the African slave trade against in- 



16 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

terference prior to the year 1808. It sanctioned 
chattel slavery, and commanded the return of 
fugitive slaves from free states. It left in 
doubt the question whether the federal com- 
pact formed an indissoluble union or a partner- 
ship of states which could be dissolved at the 
will of any of the partners. 

Never perhaps have a people paid a heavier 
penalty in money and blood for an error than 
the American people paid in our civil war, 
which came inevitably to right these mistakes 
in the constitution. 

The errors in the constitution are due to sim- 
ple and natural causes. The constitution was 
a compromise between rival states, and com- 
promises usually deviate from justice. 

The small states were jealous of the larger 
ones ; hence they demanded, and were granted, 
equal representation in the senate. The slave 
states were afraid of the free states; hence the 
provisions concerning the return of fugitive 
slaves and the inviolability of the slave trade. 
Many of the states were doubtful of the success 
of the compact ; hence the failure to deny the 
right of secession, or to affirm that the Union 
could not be dissolved. 

The electoral college was in theory a plan by 
which a number of high-minded and disinter- 
ested men, chosen by the people, should meet 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. IT 

and elect the president. In practice it is a plan 
by which a number of men, nominated by party 
conventions in the different states, are chosen to 
execute the will of a national party convention, 
expressed many months before the election. 

The fathers did the best that they could un- 
der great difficulties. They did not look upon 
their work as a finality. They provided, as 
they believed, ample means of changing the 
constitution. E'o man can see far into the 
future. They assumed that those who were to 
come after them would be as quick to detect a 
wrong, and as prompt in overturning it, as 
they had been. 

They could not have imagined that they and 
their work would become in time the objects 
of almost superstitious reverence, or that the 
minds of great lawyers, judges, publicists and 
statesmen would be confused for more than a 
hundred years between questions of right, jus- 
tice and reason on the one hand, and questions 
of constitutionality on the other hand. 

2 



Y. 



THE MINORITY CAN DEFEAT THE MAJORITY, 
AND THE GOVERNMENT CAN DEFY THE 
PEOPLE. 

THE errors in establishing slavery and in 
failing to define the meaning of the 
Federal Union have been righted. But 
other errors, some perhaps as serious and men- 
acing, remain in the constitution, and are yet 
to be righted. 

The constitution provides that each state 
shall have two representatives in the United 
States senate. Under the working of this rule 
one voter in ITevada has the same representa- 
tion in the senate as have one hundred and 
thirty- three voters in ISlew York. 

The complicated electoral college system has 
more than once defeated the will of the people. 
General Jackson, in 1824, received 50,551 more 
votes than Mr. John Quincy Adams, who be- 
came president. Mr. Tilden, in 1876, received 
250,935 more votes than Mr. Hayes, who was 
inaugurated. Mr. Cleveland, in 1888, received 
98,017 more votes than Mr. Harrison, who was 



THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 19 

elected. If Mr. Bryan, in 1896, had received 
30,000 more votes in certain close states, he 
would have defeated Mr. McKinley, who had 
a plurality of more than 600,000 of the popular 
vote. 

The house of representatives is the feature of 
our national government which responds the 
most perfectly to the will of the people, and is 
therefore the most Democratic. It is fresh 
from the people, being chosen once in two years, 
and its representation is based upon population. 

It has doubtless never happened that the 
party with the largest vote in the country has 
failed to secure thereby the largest vote in the 
house. It brings always the latest mandate 
from the people. The other branches of the 
government, when in harmony with the peo- 
ple, must also be in accord with the house. 

During the past twenty -five years — that is, 
from the 4th day of March, 1875, to the 4th 
day of March, 1900 — both the president and 
the senate have been in political accord with 
the house for seven years only, and one or both 
have been at issue with the house for eighteen 
years. 

In other words, in only seven years in the 
last quarter of a century has the government 
of the United States responded to the wiD. of 
the people. 



20 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

More than this. During the last twenty-five 
years the Democratic party has had a majority 
in the house for sixteen years, and the Repub- 
lican party for nine years. During only two 
of the sixteen years in which the Democratic 
party had control of the house, did it also have 
control of the senate and the presidency. 

The country was Democratic for sixteen 
years out of twenty-five, and yet the Demo- 
crats secured control of the national govern- 
ment for only two years out of sixteen, one- 
eighth of the time. 

And this is not all. During the two years 
out of sixteen in which, under the constitution, 
the party in the majority was able to control 
the legislative and executive branches of the 
government, one of the chief measures adopted 
by the Democratic party, the income tax law, 
was overthrown by a decision of the supreme 
court, a body wholly independent of the 
people. 

We have discovered upon a very brief inves- 
tigation that, under our constitution, the people 
of Nevada have a representation in the senate 
more than one hundred times greater in pro- 
portion to population than the people of New 
York ; that the minority may defeat the ma- 
jority in a presidential election, and that the 
government as a whole has been in harmony 



THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 21 

with the people in only seven years of the last 
quarter of a century. 

These facts dispel the illusion that ours is a 
real Democracy, ' ^ sl government of the people, 
by the people and for the people. " It is a gov- 
ernment which, as a rule, denies and defies the 
people; it is a defective and perverted Democ- 
racy. 



YI. 



THE CUMBROUS, COMPLICATED AND IRRESPON- 
SIVE NATURE OF OUR GOVERNMENT. 

THE constitution worked satisfactorily in 
the beginning. The two houses of con- 
gress were small in membership, and 
hence the better able to transact business; the 
population of the country was not great, the 
public patronage was insignificant, and the con- 
stitution was too young to be an object of rev- 
erence to statesmen and to the people ; nor had 
it become, through the increase of states and 
the growth of great permanent parties, difficult 
to change. 

The constitution went into effect in 1789. 
Ten important amendments were added in 1791, 
one was ratified in 1798 and another in 1804. 
From 1804 to the present time there has been 
no change in the constitution, save the amend- 
ments resulting from our civil war. 

The constitution established a Republic upon 
the model of the English constitutional mon- 
archy. 

Our president may be called an elective king, 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 23 

chosen for four years. He may be impeached 
with great difficulty, and only for treason or 
other crime. What could be done if the presi- 
dent should become a physical wreck, or men- 
tally deranged, is an unsolved problem. 

He fills the vacancies in the supreme court, 
the members of which hold office for life, and 
sit in judgment even upon the acts of congress. 
He is the commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy. He conducts all negotiations with for- 
eign powers. 

He cannot declare war, but his powers are so 
broad that he can conduct affairs to the point 
where war cannot be avoided. He appoints 
directly, or through his subordinates, nearly 
all of the officers and employes of the national 
government. He may veto an act of congress. 

He is the chief executive, the head of the 
nation, and conducts all of its business and 
supervises all of its vast interests, subject only 
to the constitution and the laws of congress. 

The senate was modeled upon the English 
house of lords. The members of the senate 
hold office for six years. It was designed as a 
conservative force to check hasty legislation. 

The house of representatives was modeled 
upon the English commons. 

A law of congress must be the joint act of 
both houses, with the approval of the presi- 



24 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

dent, or it must receive the vote of two-tMrds 
of both houses, in case of the veto of the 
president. 

Even the joint act of the legislative and ex- 
ecutive branches of the government may be 
nullified by the supreme court. From its de- 
cision there is no appeal. 

As the legislative and executive branches of 
the government are seldom in full accord, meas- 
ures of public policy upon which the people are 
seriously divided rarely come to a settle- 
ment. 

The cumbrous nature of our government is 
well illustrated by the silver issue. Silver was 
demonetized in 1873, either secretly and cor- 
ruptly, accidentally, or by honest intention and 
design. Each theory has its supporters. 

We have nothing to do here with the merits 
of the controversy. It is plain, however, that 
the issue could not have lasted for twenty-seven 
years if our government had been efficient and 
responsive. 

In a government free to act, the issue could 
have been made clear, and would have been 
settled, in the beginning of the controversy. 
If silver had been demonetized secretly and 
corruptly, the secrecy could have been exposed 
and the corruption punished; if accidentally, 
the error could have been rectified, and if de- 



THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 25 

liberately and of design, the action could have 
been vindicated and confirmed. 

All of the recriminations and misunderstand- 
ings, and the injury to business and property, 
resulting from the prolonged agitation of the 
silver question, can be attributed to the checks 
and balances of the constitution. 



YII. 

POWER MUST ABIDE SOMEWHERE— DENIED TO 
THE PEOPLE, AND RESTRICTED IN CONGRESS, 
IT HAS BEEN ABSORBED BY THE PRESIDENT. 

THE inability of congress to act, or to 
carry out the will of the voters, has 
discredited that body with the people, 
many of whom look upon its sittings as an inflic- 
tion, and its discussions as useless. It must be 
admitted that the powerlessness of congress has 
had an unfavorable effect upon the moral tone 
of that body. Measures have been advanced 
without serious purpose, knowing that they 
would lead to nothing. 

Congress cannot advance in power and in- 
fluence when power and influence are denied 
to that body. 

The presidency, on the other hand, in its in- 
ception a place of vast influence and dignity, 
growing constantly in independence and power, 
has appealed more to the admiration and re- 
spect of the people. 

We have grown up to the point where the 
administration is looked upon, in a large de- 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 27 

gree, as the government, and congress as a 
body to be tolerated when it is in harmony 
with, or subservient to, the president, and to 
be denounced as a contentions and obstructive 
force when it is at issue with him. 

The theory has even been advanced of late 
that criticism of the president is not only in 
bad taste, but that it is unpatriotic, disloyal, 
and may even be treasonable. 

In recent years a president spoke of the fact 
that he should soon ' ' have congress on his 
hands," as if congress were an annoying or a 
troublesome body. The remark was resented 
at the time by the members of congress and by 
many of the people. 

More recently, however, since the outbreak 
of the war with Spain, the majority in con- 
gress, with the support of many members of 
the party in opposition to the president, have 
shown great eagerness to confer extraordinary 
powers upon the president, and to leave inter- 
ests and questions of great importance to his 
discretion. In the last two years, congress has 
made important advances in the line of abdi- 
cating its powers to the president. 

For our good the fathers made change in the 
government difficult. They feared a reaction 
in favor of monarchy. But monarchy is a fact, 
and not a name. Monarchy is government by 



28 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

one man ; the placing of too much power in the 
hands of one man. 

The chief of a state may call himself Pro- 
tector, Friend of the People or President, and 
yet be really a monarch. 

Despotism usually assumes the cloak of be- 
nevolence. Bigots have burned the few to save 
the souls of the many. The despot is almost 
invariably, in his own mind, the chosen instru- 
ment of God. 

Power must abide somewhere. If it be de- 
nied to the people, then it must be exercised 
by those in office who are, for the time at least, 
beyond the reach of the people. 

The constitution confers upon the president 
extraordinary and arbitrary powers, which cus- 
tom and usage have strengthened. 

The power denied to the people by the consti- 
tution, or conferred upon their representatives 
in congress under restrictions which nullify it 
in the main, has been gradually absorbed by 
the president. 

The slow, clumsy and obstructive methods 
of two large legislative bodies, frequently out 
of harmony with each other, have often forced 
upon the president responsibility which he 
would doubtless have avoided. 

His action in each case of this nature has be- 
come a precedent for his successors, and upon 



THE COMING DEMOCKACT. 29 

these precedents has been built the present 
mighty fabric of the presidential prerogative. 

The presidency has been described as the 
greatest office on earth. It probably is the 
most powerful place in the world. The presi- 
dent is the head of his party, as well as the 
head of the state. He has the disposal of two 
hundred thousand places, many of them being 
of much profit and honor. 

This vast patronage gives to the president 
more power than is granted to any king, kaiser 
or czar. Through it he is generally able to 
hold in subjection the members of his own 
party in congress, and to coerce the legislative 
branches of the government into compliance 
with his will. 

The fathers built a structure which they in- 
tended to guard and protect our freedom. But 
the plan involved a denial of our freedom. 
Freedom ceases to be freedom when guards 
and limitations and checks and balances are 
set about it. 

The structure of the fathers, designed to pre- 
vent a reaction in favor of monarchy, has re- 
established the one-man power which they 
aimed most earnestly to destroy forever. 



YIIL 

IN ENGLAND THE CONSTITUTION IS THE WILL 
OF THE PEOPLE — THE GOVERNMENT RE- 
SPONDS PROMPTLY TO THE PEOPLE. 

THE governmental growth of the two 
great English-speaking nations has been 
in ahnost exactly opposite directions 
throughout the century now closing. 

In England the constitution is unwritten ; it 
is the will of the people. Every act of parlia- 
ment which conforms with the principles of 
English jurisprudence becomes a part of the 
constitution. 

JS'o political institution in England is in- 
trenched behind the constitution. The ques- 
tion of constitutionality is never raised there. 
The constitution being simply the will of the 
people, the mandate of the majority is always 
constitutional. 

In England the government — which is the 
ministry, made up of the ablest men of the 
party in power for the time — when it finds 
itself in conflict with the commons, or has rea- 
son to suspect that it may not be in accord with 



THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 31 

the people, dissolves parliament and makes an 
appeal to the people, an issue which is decided 
within a few weeks. 

The will of the people is the chronometer 
by which the public policy of England is regu- 
lated. 

If the appeal results in the vindication of the 
ministry, it remains in power; it has secured a 
new lease of life, a new grant of authority 
from the source of all political power. 

If the election results in the defeat of the 
ministry, that body at once resigns, and the 
queen sends for the leader of the now trium- 
phant opposition and requests him to form a 
new ministry and assume control of the gov- 
ernment. 

The history of England for a hundred years 
is a record of almost unceasing progress, of one 
reform measure following another — the aboli- 
tion of slavery, the repeal of the corn laws, 
the franchise bill, the disestablishment of the 
church in Ireland, the removal of the political 
disabilities of the Jews, the enfranchisement of 
the Catholics, and the broadening and exten- 
sion of the suffrage. 

Ancient abuses which, under a less respon- 
sive government, would yield only to violence, 
are melting away. 

In England the prerogatives of the throne 



82 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

have been persistently infringed upon and re- 
duced until it has been shorn of almost the last 
vestige of real political power. In America 
the presidency has grown and strengthened 
until the president may almost say, as did the 
Grand Monarque, '' I am the state." 

In England majorities are effective; here 
they are frequently powerless. 

The history of England for the century is a 
story of the curtailment or of the abolition of 
privilege; the recent history of America is a 
record of the growth of privilege. 

The English government, as it has drawn 
near to the people, has become less corrupt; 
our government, as it has diverged from the 
people, has become more corrupt. 

In England the system of government, which 
responds promptly to the will of the people, is 
free and natural. Progress under it is normal 
and gradual on the lines of evolution. Here 
progress, restrained and hindered hj the checks 
and balances, long baffled and delayed by cir- 
cumlocution, is unnatural, and its failure invites 
discontent and anarchy. 

Indeed we have made but one progressive 
movement of great importance in a hundred 
years — the abolition of slaver}' — and that came 
through civil war. 

America has the forms, but is lacking in the 



THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 33 

fact, of Democracy. England has the forms 
of monarchy and the essential fact of Democ- 
racy — that the voice of the people can be ex- 
pressed quickly and effectively whenever an 
issue of importance is reached, and that their 
will is supreme and final. 

"We have been considering here the England 
at home; the England which recognizes the 
dignity, freedom and sovereignty of its own 
people — Democratic England, and not that Im- 
perial England which, as these words are writ- 
ten, is engaged in an effort to subjugate a brave 
people in South Africa, devoted equally with 
the English to freedom and independence. 
3 



IX. 



OUR GOVERNMENT IS A TRAIN BEHIND TIME, 
A CLOCK WHICn SELDOM STRIKES THE HOUR, 
A SHIP WHICH DISOBEYS ITS CAPTAIN. 

THE checks and balances bar the people 
from the present control of the govern- 
ment. We are under the rule mainly 
of the dead. 

We are shorn of power to meet the issues and 
emergencies of our own time. Our government 
is based on the theory, practically, that the 
men of the past only are able to govern wisely 
the people of the present. 

Our government is a train usually behind 
time, a clock which seldom strikes the hour, a 
ship which rarely yields obedience to its captain. 

The fathers gave us freedom without the 
ability to use it. We may swim, but we must 
not go near the water; we may walk, but we 
must not use our legs. 

Inactivity begets vice, decay and death. The 
checks and balances which forbid activity in 
public affairs on the line of public policy pro- 
duce the boodler and the spoilsman. 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 35 

Our government is rotten from the lack of 
wholesome use, and because the moral and 
mental activities of the people have little influ- 
ence upon it. 

This composite race of ours is not defective 
in energy, ingenuity, zeal or sagacity. As a 
rule, our people do not fail in their under- 
takings. 

We have failed in public affairs because the 
checks and balances forbid the use of our facul- 
ties. Could we expect to produce great painters 
or inventors if our laws or systems should prac- 
tically forbid improvement in art or invention ? 
' It is unsafe in a Republic to place barriers in 
the way of the execution of the people's will. 
It is unwise to give to the senate, the president 
and the supreme court the power to baffle the 
people. 

The checks and balances are a source of ac- 
tual danger, as well as of corruption and decay. 
An imchangeable government invites revolt. 

We may have another issue over an electoral 
count, such as that of 1877, or a question of 
the magnitude of slavery may grow out of the 
overshadowing combinations of capital which 
now darken our horizon. What assurances 
have we that our slow-moving, irresponsive 
government would be equal to such an emer- 
gency? 



36 THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 

A free government should not be built in 
fear and distrust of the people. There is no 
conservatism more wholesome than that of free 
and enlightened men. 

A free state should respond to the living, not 
to the dead. The living should carry the re- 
sponsibility of their own time; the people of 
the present should rule in the present, and the 
people of the future should rule in the future. 

The fathers are dead. They are worthy of 
all the credit and honor we have bestowed, or 
shall yet bestow, upon them. But we should 
honor them poorly by setting up the claim of 
infallibility for them or for their work, or by 
tolerating for their sakes the outrages and 
wrongs which are the fruitage of their errors. 

Patriotism did not die with the fathers, nor 
did integrity and wisdom go with them to their 
honored graves. 




X. 



THE NATURAL CROPS OF AN IRRESPONSIVE 
AND UNPROGRESSIVE REPUBLIC ARE PATRON- 
AGE, PRIVILEGE AND CORRUPTION. 

E may now imderstand why ours is 
the only country in the world in 
which political parties are main- 
tained principally for spoils, and become per- 
manent organizations for the distribution of 
patronage. 

The fixed and unchangeable nature of the 
government leads to the formation of fixed and 
unchangeable parties. 

The complexities of the government make 
action on the line of public policies and meas- 
ures difiicult and almost impracticable. 

As a field which will rarely produce grain or 
grass, or other useful things, is in time aban- 
doned to weeds and thistles, so our government, 
which rarely responds to the will of the people, 
which becomes effective and progressive after 
long intervals only, and then usually by acci- 
dent or violence, has been abandoned mainly 
to its natural crops. 



38 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

The natural crops of an irresponsive and un- 
progressive Kepublic are patronage, privilege 
and corruption. These are the weeds and this- 
tles, the snakes and vampires, the things harm- 
ful, hideous and venomous, which grow in the 
barren uplands and stagnant swamps of the 
spurious Democracy which defies the people. 

It is natural that the state which claims to 
be a Democracy, and yet is not a true Democ- 
racy, should become more corrupt than the 
state which makes no pretense of consulting 
the will of the people. For the latter is more 
sincere and honest than the former; it does not 
pretend to grant rights which are really with- 
held. 

Moreover, there must be fixed and unchang- 
ing responsibility back of a despotism, which 
does not abide with the ruling powers in a de- 
fective Democracy. 

A despot is the defender of his own privileges 
and of the privileges of his class ; but it is not 
to his interest to have his rule discredited by 
the debauchery of the public service. An inert 
Democracy, on the other hand, becomes the 
prey of countless schemers who seek private 
advantage. 



XI. 



OUR ARMIES OF SPOILS, AS ZEALOUS, ASPIR- 
ING AND INVINCIBLE AS THE LEGIONS UNDER 
NAPOLEON AT FRIEDLAND. 

THE political party, as it exists to-day in 
the United States, is a remarkable 
growth. The people are ruled by par- 
ties, and parties are permanent organizations 
ruled by men who make a business of politics. 
The organization of these interested men who 
rule a party in its various branches is called 
the machine because of the perfection of its 
mechanism. 

Given 200,000 men in federal offices, at least 
200,000 more in state, city, county and other 
local offices, and at least 600,000 more who are 
living in the expectancy of office, and we may 
comprehend the power of the machine. 

An active, well-disciplined army of 400,000 
to 500,000 men makes up the Kepublican ma- 
chine, and about the same number composes 
the Democratic machine. Every man in these 
armies is inspired by present earnings or the 
hope of future rewards or promotions. These 



40 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

rewards are dazzling to the imagination of the 
party workers. 

The private in the ranks looks forward to 
advancement, and if he be competent and am- 
bitious he can see before him a brilliant career 
of profit, distinction and glory — committee 
work, a small chairmanship, a small office, rec- 
ognition by a city or state leader, a seat in the 
legislature or the board of aldermen, elevation 
to a city or state office, maybe to congress, a 
governorship, a senatorship, an embassadorship, 
a cabinet place, even the presidency itself. 

Napoleon in his zenith at Friedland did not 
have a more zealous, loyal and aspiring army 
to support him than has each of our political 
parties in its corps of eager placemen and aspir- 
ants to place. 

The machine maintains the management of 
its party through its control of the primaries 
and nominating conventions. Captains of pre- 
cincts, colonels of counties, generals of cities 
and states, field marshals of the nation, lead 
their well-disciplined hosts to the conflict. 

He who would fi gure in public affairs must 
work with one organization or the other, accept 
its tests and submit to its discipline. A revolt 
from party is rarely forgiven, and only after 
a long period of penance. 

Theoretically there is no reason why the 



THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 41 

tariff question should enter into a municipal 
contest in Indiana, or the silver issue into the 
local elections of Philadelphia or Chicago. It 
is plain that local issues should enter into local 
elections, state issues into state elections and 
national issues into national elections. 

We do not inquire about the political princi- 
ples of the officers of a bank before opening an 
account there ; nor do we probe into the politi- 
cal views of employes and tradesmen before 
hiring or dealing with them ; nor do we care 
whether a physician is of our party before en- 
gaging him. 

Passengers on a train do not care whether 
the man on the engine is a protectionist or 
a free-trader, a Republican, a Democrat or a 
Socialist. All they care to know is that he is 
a competent engineer. 

We intrust our money, our health and our 
lives constantly to men who differ with us in 
party faith, but the business affairs of our 
county or city we will not confide to those 
who disagree with us in politics. 

This distinction between the conduct of our 
public and private interests is not made of free 
choice by the voter who has no interest in ma- 
chine politics. He finds that generally only 
two local tickets are presented to his choice, 
one by the Eepubiican and the other by the 



42 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

Democratic machine. Each of these tickets is 
made up by the local political organization, 
which controls the primaries and all of the 
other machinery of politics. 

Sometimes reform movements are organized, 
and in rare cases they are successful, but they 
are always short-lived, yielding to the superior 
skill, determination and discipline of the ma- 
chine organizations, as an undisciplined mob 
must always yield to well-organized and ex- 
perienced troops. 

The mass of voters outside of the machines 
are as powerless against the political organiza- 
tions as are the men in civil life in Germany 
against the imperial army of the kaiser. 

The evils of our form of Democracy, which 
responds so slowly and imperfectly to the will 
of the people, which defies the people more fre- 
quently than it yields to them, may be traced 
in the profligacy and corruption existing in all 
the branches of our Republic, national, state 
and local ; in the organization of invincible and 
permanent political parties devoted to the dis- 
tribution of honors, perquisites, privileges and 
patronage, and in the helplessness of the people 
under the most exasperating, subtle and for- 
midable systems of oppression. 



XII. 

UNITY, SIMPLICITY AND RESPONSIBILITY—NO 
HUMAN ORGANIZATION HAS EVER PROSPERED 
UNDER A DOUBLE-HEADED MANAGEMENT. 

FOU the present we shall confine our com- 
ments npon the problem of governmen- 
tal reform to the cities, using for pur- 
poses of illustration the city of 'New York, the 
largest municipality in the country. 

The fatal complexities in the national gov- 
ernment have been copied in the municipal 
governments. A city is ruled by two, three 
or four conflicting heads or powers. 

Many pages would be required even to epit- 
omize the extraordinary complexities of the 
present government of the city of ]New York. 
There are 260,000 words in its charter. Power 
is diffused among the mayor, the heads of de- 
partments more or less independent, a munic- 
ipal legislature with two houses, the borough 
governments and various commissions. 

The real problem of municipal government 
is nothing more than a question of business on 
a large scale. 



44 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

Is it difficult or impossible to handle business 
on a large scale efficiently and honestly ? 

The answer must be that the larger the pri- 
vate business enterprise, the more complete is 
its division of labor, the more perfect its ma- 
chinery in its minor details as well as in its 
important parts, and the more satisfactory its 
results. 

Let us now seek information in the school of 
experience. Our ways of handling the public 
business are more than a hundred years old, 
while the methods of handling private business 
are up to date. The old ways have failed ; the 
new ways are successful. We must investigate 
the new methods. 

We shall discover that the new methods are 
all practicall}^ included in one simple machine 
— the corporation. 

The corporation is the most successful form 
of organization that has yet been devised for 
the management of large and permanent busi- 
ness enterprises. It has been misused, as all 
human institutions and combinations have been 
and will be. Sometimes it has become the in- 
strument of monopoly and oppression, which 
is an evidence of its strength as well as of its 
evil tendencies. It makes no pretensions to 
philanthropy, or to public spirit. It has no 
motive save profit. 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 45 

As a pule, the corporation works with the 
utmost efficiency, economy and faithfulness in 
the interest of its stockholders. In some cases 
the shareholders in the majority have oppressed 
or wronged those in the minority. This rarely 
happens, however, in corporations of substance, 
and it is rendered difficult by a system of pro- 
portional representation which safeguards the 
interests of the minority, and which is growing 
in favor and increasing in use. 

The corporation is built upon the theory that 
there is but one interest to be considered — the 
interest of the stockholders. Experience has 
determined that this interest is best served by 
placing the management of the corporation in 
the hands of a small board of directors, consist- 
ing rarely of more than fifteen persons, and 
more frequently of three, ^yg or seven, elected 
annually by the shareholders. 

This board adopts, alters or amends the by- 
laws of the corporation and elects its officers, who 
are also, in the more progressive corporations, 
removable at the will of the directors. The board 
is the supreme official force in the corporation. 

The stockholders delegate all of their powers, 
it will be observed, to one board. If two 
boards were authorized, they would frequently 
be in conflict, and the efficiency of the corpora- 
tion be impaired. 



4:6 THE COMma DEMOCRACY. 

A second governing board in a corporation 
would be as useless as a second captain of a 
ship, or a second commander of an army. 

A double-headed management is unfitted for 
a corporation, ship, army, city or state, and 
for every form of human organization. 

Even in a partnership one of the partners 
must lead. Each family must have a head ; if 
the man be incapable, the woman must com- 
mand. 

Power, to be effective, must rest in one man, 
or one body of men. 

If the interests of a corporation were con- 
trolled by two boards, an executive elected for 
four years, and a supreme council holding for 
life, it would of necessity become an ineificient, 
a helpless, and perhaps also a corrupt, organi- 
zation. It is true that this is the form of gov- 
ernment in our Eepublic, and imitated in our 
states and cities, but it has been in no case 
successful. 

The one board in the corporation is composed 
of a small number of men, for the reason that 
a body consisting of a large number of men can- 
not transact business promptly or thoroughly. 

The one small board is elected annually that 
its members may be in touch with, and closely 
responsible to, the stockholders. 

The perfection of the corporation as a busi- 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 47 

ness macliine is due to its unity, simplicity and 
responsibility. 

One board rules. It is large enough to rep- 
resent varying interests and to secure diversity 
of opinion and counsel, but it is not so large as 
to be cumbrous. 

The one small board is as free as any repre- 
sentative body can be, and yet it is held to a 
close accountability to its shareholders through 
the annual election. 

In its more perfect organization, this board 
is representative of the minority as weU as of 
the majority interests among stockholders, each 
interest having representation in proportion to 
its holdings of shares. 



XIII. 

THE FREE MAN'S BALLOT— ONE VOTE FOR ONE 
CAUSE AND FOR ONE CANDIDATE. 

N considering the question of reforming the 
government of the city of 'New York, we 
cannot ignore the experience of the cor- 
poration, the only machine that has ever yet 
handled business on a large scale with almost 
perfect success. 

We shall doubtless discover that the main 
points in the machinery of a sound govern- 
ment, as in the machinery of a successful 
business enterprise, are unity, simplicity and 
responsibility. 

Let us now inquire whether the simple ma- 
chinery of the business corporation may not fit 
the needs of municipal government. 

We may assume for the time that each voter 
bears the same relation to the city of I^ew York 
that the holder of one share of stock bears to 
a private corporation. 

Mention has been made herein of the fact that 
proportional representation has been growing 
in favor with the more progressive corporations. 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 49 

Proportional representation provides, in a 
corporation with live directors, that one-fifth 
of the shares may elect one director, two-fifths 
two directors, and so on. In a corporation 
with fifteen directors, one-fifteenth of the shares 
may elect one director, and five-fifteenths of 
the shares five directors. 

A very short and simple charter from the 
legislature of the state of E'ew York would 
confer upon the voters of the city of ISTew York 
the right to manage and control their munici- 
pal affairs in accordance with their desires and 
interests. 

The machinery of city government so granted, 
if it were based upon the experience of the most 
successful corporations, would provide that the 
city should be ruled by a small board of trus- 
tees, say fifteen in number, elected once a year, 
under a scientific system of proportional repre- 
sentation. 

This board would be authorized to enact all 
laws, rules and regulations needful for the gov- 
ernment of the city, to elect its chief executive 
and other officers, to define their duties, and 
to remove them at its will. 

The board of fifteen trustees should be elected 
from the whole city — from the city ^^ at large " 
as we sometimes say — and not from districts. 

There are various forms of ballots under dif- 
4 



50 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

ferent sj^stems of proportional representation, 
but it happens fortunately that the simplest is 
the most effective. Its simplicity is so perfect, 
and its effectiveness so remarkable, as will be 
shown later, that it may well be designated the 
Free Man's Ballot. 

This is a copy of the Free Man's Ballot, for 
the Republican party, as it may be voted in 
any election in the city of I^ew York, under 
the new charter, placing the government of 
the city in the hands of a board of fifteen 
trustees : 



REPUBLICAN TICKET. 
For Trustee, City of IS'ew York, 



Ojfficial Instructions. 

The voter must WRITE in the preceding blank space 
the ONE name of his choice. 

He is free to vote for any citizen of New York City. 

If he fails to write a name, liis vote will count for his 
party or cause only. 

If he cannot write, or if he be disabled, he may bring a 
friend who will be permitted to write the name for him 
at the polls. 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 51 

Other tickets will be headed with the names 
of other parties, causes or measures — as '' Demo- 
cratic Ticket," *^Good Government Ticket," 
*' Police Eeform Ticket" and *' Anti-Kamapo 
Ticket. ' ' An ofllcial party emblem, or picture, 
may be used also, if desired. 

With the Free Man's Ballot the voter ex- 
presses first his choice of the party, cause or 
measure for which his vote shall be counted, 
and second his choice of candidates for the 
office of trustee. 

"We may now consider the practical working 
of the new system. 

Let us assume that there are 600,000 voters 
in the city of JSTew York. As there are fifteen 
trustees to be elected, a party, cause or organi- 
zation for the promotion of a principle or meas- 
ure, will elect one trustee if it have the support 
of 40,000 voters — one-fifteenth of the whole 
number — two trustees if it have 80,000 voters, 
and so on. 

The election officers, upon the closing of the 
polls, will count first the heads of the ballots, 
to determine how many votes have been cast 
for each party or cause. Let us assume that 
this count results, in the whole city, as fol- 
lows : 



52 THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 

Democratic (Tammany Hall) 239, 000 

Independent Democratic 43, 000 

Eepublican 147,000 

Good Government 74,000 

Police Reform 53, 000 

Anti-Ramapo 35,000 

Scattering 9,000 

Total 600, 000 

Since 40,000 votes are required as the full 
quota to elect one trustee, it now appears that 
the Tammany Hall Democrats have elected five 
trustees, with 39,000 votes in excess. 

The Independent Democrats have elected one 
trustee, with 3,000 votes in excess. 

The Republicans have elected three trustees, 
with 2Y,000 votes in excess. 

The Good Government party has elected one 
trustee, with 34,000 votes in excess. 

The Police Reformers have elected one trus- 
tee, with 13,000 votes in excess. 

The Anti-Ramapo party has elected no trus- 
tee, but it has a surplus vote of 35,000. 

The scattering have wasted 9,000 votes. 

Eleven trustees have now been chosen on full 
quotas. Four more must be distributed where 
they rightly belong. 

It is evident that these should go in equity 
to the four parties having the largest surplus 
vote — one to the Tammany HaK Democrats, 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 53 

with 39,000 votes in excess, one to the Anti- 
Eamapo party, with 35,000 surplus votes, one 
to the Good Government party, with 84,000 
votes in excess, and one to the Eepublicans, 
with 27,000 votes in excess. 

The board of trustees will now stand as fol- 
lows: 

Taminany Hall 6 

Independent Democratic 1 

Republican 4 

Good Government 2 

Police Reform 1 

Anti-Ramapo 1 

Total 15 

Each party, or cause, is now represented in 
the board of trustees in nearly exact proportion 
to its voting strength. 

This vote having determined that six men on 
the Tammany Hall ticket have been elected, 
the completion of the count of the Tammany 
Hall ballots will determine the six names 
thereon that have received the highest votes, 
and these will therefore be chosen trustees, as 
will the one man having the highest vote on 
the Independent Democratic ticket, the four 
men having the highest votes on the Eepub- 
lican ticket, and so on. 

It will be the duty of the election officials to 



54 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

certify the vote cast for all of the candidates, 
chosen and unchosen, on all of the ballots, as a 
matter of publicity, and for another important 
reason : 

If any candidate chosen should fail to qual- 
ify as a trustee, or should resign, die or become 
disqualified during his term of ofBce, he should 
be succeeded by the candidate on the same 
ticket who received the highest vote given on 
that ticket to a candidate who was unchosen. 
This would provide a just means of succession 
in the case of a vacancy, without the expense 
or trouble of holding a special election. 



XIY. 

THE VOTER MAKES HIS OWN NOMINATION— 
BOSSISM IS ABOLISHED AND POLITICAL MA- 
CHINES ARE BROKEN. 

THE man who enters into the isolation of 
the election booth to prepare the Free 
Man's Ballot is as free as the law can 
make him from every form of dictation, co- 
ercion and intimidation. 

He is to express his choice in two forms, 
which embrace the whole of a voter's will — 
first, in declaring the party, cause or measures 
which he approves ; and, second, in naming the 
man of his choice to execute his will. 

He can choose in freedom a ballot headed by 
the name of the party or cause of his choice, 
and his own mind must furnish the name of 
his candidate. 

No caucus^ prhnary or convention can control 
him who votes roith the Free Man's Ballot. He 
names his own man j he m^akes his own nom- 
ination. 

Heelers, bosses and the manipulators of the 
party machines can plead, advise and urge, but 



5G THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

they can no longer dictate. Their vocation is 
gone, their scepters are broken, their power 
has departed, and they must soon 

"Fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away." 

The legal complications in which they were 
intrenched, the spurious and rotten forms of 
Democracy which produced them, have been 
swept away. "No power shall henceforth, in 
the city of 'New York, prevent the free expres- 
sion of the people's will, or the complete re- 
sponsibility of those who are chosen to exe- 
cute it. 

Party organizations and conventions we shall 
still have, but since the power of naming can- 
didates has ceased to exist, the conventions 
must confine themselves to the legitimate work 
of formulating principles and measures, and 
the organizations must work chiefly for the 
advancement of these ideas and policies. 

We can conceive that the organization of a 
party will, under the new order, respectfully 
recommend to its voters a long list of the 
strongest and most popular men in its rauks as 
being worthy of consideration for the impor- 
taut office of trustee of the city of New York. 

Instead of attempting to dictate nominations, 
the new party leaders will probably search the 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 57 

city for able and sincere men whose names will 
give prestige to their cause, and we may be 
sure that no man with a following of much con- 
sequence will be overlooked, since the "voter is 
free to go outside of the list for his candidate. 

A party or cause will now be judged — first, 
by its declaration of principles and policies; 
and, second, by the character of the men com- 
mended, not nominated, for office. 

It can no longer be said, as of old, that the 
platform is good, but the men are bad, or that 
the men are good, but the principles are bad. 
The men are of the same kind as the measures, 
and the measures match the men. 

The office will now literally seek the man, 
and not the man the office. The men named 
in advance as available will be in no sense nom- 
inees, nor even, in a literal sense, candidates. 
They will be named because of the presumption 
that the use of their names will strengthen the 
cause for which each one will stand. 

To be named under such circumstances will 
be a public honor, to be defeated with other 
good men will be no discredit, to be elected 
will be a distinction. 

Slander, detraction and personal animosities 
will disappear in the main in political cam- 
paigns, since there will be no nominees or pro- 
nounced candidates to become the targets of 



58 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

envy or malice. The strife will no longer be 
over the question whether this man or that 
man shall triumph, but whether this measure 
or that policy shall prevail. 

We will no longer be wild clans following a 
chieftain, but sober men pondering over the 
public good. Partisan feuds and meanness will 
disappear, and politics will become a noble 
strife between rival measures for the common 
welfare. 

Parties will be constantly advancing and 
forming anew as issues move and change, in 
response to altered conditions, to the lessons of 
experience, and to the increased intelligence 
and higher public spirit of the people. Men 
will no longer helong to parties; parties will 
belong to men. 

The people will be profoundly interested con- 
stantly in the questions: What is practicable? 
What is reasonable ? What is just and fair ? 

We will begin to understand that this city is 
our city, that its beauty, order, wholesomeness 
is our glory, and its uncleanness is our shame. 

A man to be chosen trustee must have a very 
considerable following — at the lowest, perhaps, 
ten to twenty thousand votes. It will seldom 
happen that an insignificant or incompetent 
man can secure such a vote in competition with 
the best men in the city. 



THE COMING DEMOCSACY. 59 

The most popular man in a cause will receive 
the largest vote on his party ticket, the second 
in popularity will receive the second vote, and 
so on. Every election will determine definitely 
the leadership of the different political bodies 
in the city. The people will name their leaders, 
reaffirm them, or change them, in freedom. 

The leader of the party in the majority will 
probably be chosen as mayor of the city by the 
board of trustees. The leaders of the parties 
in the minority will also occupy places of honor 
and responsibility. 

Each leader will strive to retain and to in- 
crease the esteem and the good will of his fol- 
lowers, and it is unlikely that he will succeed, 
under the free conditions which will prevail, if 
he be not sincere, honest, strong and able. 

The people will find out whose actions are 
equal to his promises, who is alert in emergen- 
cies, who can be trusted. In freedom, they 
will not tolerate false or incompetent leader- 
ship. "We shall have a new and better order of 
men in public life. 




XY. 

THEACHERY IS THAT OFFENSE WHICH RANKS A 
LITTLE LOWER IN THE MINDS OF MEN THAN 
ANY OTHER CRIME. 

'' T "^^ THY should we assume that the men 
elected as trustees through the 
Free Man's Ballot will be inspired 
by higher motives than those who are chosen 
for representative positions under present sj^'s- 
tems? Is it not in the nature of things that 
men will abuse, or turn to their own advan- 
tage, the power that may be given to them? " 

We should bear in mind that under present 
systems the men chosen to office are under 
no mandate to represent the whole people, or 
to advance measures only. They are chosen to 
represent their party, and 'party has grown to 
mean a machine to gather patronage and spoils. 

Candidates are named by the machine; they 
are expected to serve the machine, and they are 
seldom faithless to this trust. 

More than five thousand men have filled the 
office of presidential elector in the United 
States, all of whom were free to cast their 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 61 

votes as they pleased. If an elector chosen on 
the Democratic ticket should vote for a Kepub- 
lican candidate, he would violate no law; he 
could even claim with truth that it was the 
intention of the f ramers of the constitution to 
give perfect freedom of choice to the presiden- 
tial electors. 

Each of the electors has been under a moral 
obligation, however, to vote for the candidate 
of his party, l^ot one of the five thousand 
ever violated this obligation. 

It may be said also of the thousands who 
have been sent to congress, of more than a 
hundred thousand who have served in the state 
legislatures and filled other representative posi- 
tions, and of the millions who have been elected 
to other offices, that rarely has one been treach- 
erous to the party that chose him. 

Those who were instructed by their party to 
support certain measures have obeyed their in- 
structions, those who were chosen to represent 
moneyed interests have been true to those in- 
terests, and those who have been named by a 
boss have been faithful to the boss. 

Faithlessness and treachery are qualities ab- 
horrent to all sorts and conditions of men. Even 
criminals are usually faithful to their accom- 
plices. Many a burglar has served a long term 
in prison, and murderers have gone to the scaf- 



62 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

fold, rather than purchase freedom, or even life 
itself, through the betrayal of a comrade. 

Treachery is that offense which ranks a lit- 
tle lower in the minds of men than any other 
crime. 

"VVe may now assume that men elected to 
office, under the new order, in which they are 
chosen as the representatives of a cause, will 
be faithful to their trust. 

The honor which prevails among politicians 
and spoilsmen, and which is not lacking even 
among criminals, will surely be found in the 
higher grade of men who will come to the front. 

Harmony will be established which was lack- 
ing under the old systems. Men of character 
who hold public office under present conditions 
suffer much humiliation in the conflict between 
two inclinations — the one to be faithful to the 
party which has elevated them to office, and 
the other to serve singly the public interest. 

There will be no such conflict in the minds 
of men chosen under the new order. It wiU 
be apparent, after we have adopted honest sys- 
tems, that practically all men will desire hon- 
est government, and the representative who 
should, under such circumstances, betray his 
constituency, and also violate the principles 
of common honesty, would be a man of ex- 
ceptional baseness. 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 63 

It is now apparent that we have lost faith in 
Democracy without reason, and also that we 
have lost faith unnecessarily in human nature. 

As we go deeper into the matter we discover 
that even the politicians, against whom we rail 
and complain, have been less faithless than we 
had supposed, and that they are really the vic- 
tims of the evil systems which have corrupted 
them. 



XYI. 

IN ANSWER TO THE CHARGE THAT THE PEO- 
PLE ARE UNPATRIOTIC, UNTRUSTWORTHY 
OR CORRUPT. 



A= 



" * H," says the Doubter, "you are an 
optimist, and don't know mankind. 
You think that men are honest and 
intelligent, and that your little ballot trick will 
transform the rotten politics of 'New York, turn 
vice into virtue and ignorance into intelligence. 
I tell you the government of New York is cor- 
rupt because the people are corrupt, it is igno- 
rant because the people are ignorant, and it is 
dishonest because the people are dishonest. 

" If you can devise a scheme that will make 
the people honest and intelligent, then you can 
have honest and intelligent government, but no 
change in the way of voting can bring about 
such a result." 

This interruption will justify us in halting to 
inquire whether men are really so bad as some 
men would have us believe. The habit of 
speaking with contempt of the people has 
grown among us in a marked manner in these 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 65 

later times. The term " people " usually means, 
in this connection, the wage-earners who have 
saved little or nothing, all who live from hand 
to mouth, the poor people, the '' rabble." 

The one who deplores most the benighted 
and immoral condition of his fellow men, is 
usually in comfortable circumstances. From a 
place of ease and security, where temptation 
does not assail him, he looks down with some 
censoriousness upon his less fortunate brethren. 

One fact is plain — the poor people have not 
corrupted the city or the state. Some of them 
have been corrupted, but these have not been 
the source of corruption, and their share in the 
plunder has been very small. At the most 
they have been only insignificant and silent 
partners in the schemes of public dishonesty. 
And those of the poor who have been corrupted 
are but a small part of the whole body. 

His country is more, as a rule, to the poor 
man than to the rich man. Few poor men 
have ever voluntarily expatriated themselves; 
it is not the poor who have lost faith in their 
country. The rich man has many interests, 
many things in which he can take pride; the 
poor man has little of which he is very proud 
save his country. He believes, however hard 
his luck has been, that he is a joint owner in 
the best and greatest country in the world. 
5 



QQ THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

He is intensely patriotic. He loves his coun- 
try with a passionate devotion. Its flag thrills 
him ; its national airs quicken his blood. He 
believes that, if the sacrifice need be, he could 
even die for his country. 

Indeed, within the last forty years, four hun- 
dred thousand Americans, and nearly all poor 
men, have laid their lives, ' ' the last full meas- 
ure of their devotion," upon the altar of their 
country. If our country were in peril, a mil- 
lion poor men would volunteer in a week to 
face death in its defense. 

We are trusting to the honesty and intelli- 
gence of the poor and ignorant every day of 
our lives — in the trains, on the streets, in 
all the minute ramifications of work and 
trade, in places of pleasure, even in our 
sleep. 

If we are on the point of suffocation from 
fire, a poor man, a stranger to us, risks his life 
to save ours. It is his trade. 

"Who are the engineers, the firemen, the 
watchmen, the lonely sentinels, the life-savers 
on dangerous coasts, the alert men all over the 
world, who are always on a strain to help and 
save us, and who so often give their lives for 
the sake of duty and honor ? 

They are poor men, and often they are very 
ignorant ; men to whom Fate has denied favor 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 67 

and opportunity, but whose souls are as white 
and clean as the soul of any king. 

The greatest and most generous philanthro- 
pists are found among the very poor, who give 
all they have in surplus, and reduce their bread 
and meat, to help those who are poorer still. 
Go, ye proud givers, whose bounty is trumpeted 
to the ends of the earth, and learn what philan- 
thropy really is from the poor and humble, who 
pay in sacrifice for the privilege of helpful- 
ness ! 

We shall not find the best examples of hero- 
ism and valor on the red fields where men slay 
and are slain, but down rather among the poor, 
where men and women fight with stout hearts 
every day and hour of their forlorn lives against 
the black hosts of Humiliation and Want and 
Disease and Uncertainty and Despair. 

It is poverty and want and privation that 
bring out the kindly, generous, brave and fra- 
ternal qualities in man; and it is riches and 
power and ambition that blight these noblest 
fruits of human life. 

And who are we who can look with such 
scorn upon the poor and the ignorant ? There 
is not a man among us whose antecedents do 
not run back in the dim past to a naked sav- 
age, and not one in a hundred whose family 
history may not be summed up, as Lincoln 



68 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

said with proud humility of his own, in " the 
short and simple annals of the poor." 

Know, ye proud and haughty ones, that a 
child of your blood shall one day be in rags and 
tatters, scorned as you scorn these; and that 
the children of these humble souls shall rise to 
high places, for the great and noble may come, 
and usually do come, from the loins of the 
poor! 



XYII. 

HONEST SYSTEMS PRODUCE HONEST RESULTS, 
RIGHT SYSTEMS RIGHT RESULTS, AND WRONG 
SYSTEMS WRONG RESULTS. 

THERE are more rich men in the city of 
]^ew York than in any other city of 
the world. Most of them have made 
their own fortunes. They are men of practical 
minds, of good courage for a fight, and very 
resourceful in securing their aims. They are 
familiar vi^ith large undertakings, and are un- 
accustomed to failure. 

These men are, as a rule, scornful of the cor- 
ruption and profligacy in the present govern- 
ment of the city of l^ew York. Some of them 
have been outraged and wronged by it. They 
grumble and complain against it; they de- 
nounce it ; they desire to see it reformed. 

Now, if the system of government in the city 
is one that admits of reform, if the rottenness 
be not seated in the system itself, and hence 
ineradicable save by reforming the system, why 
do not these powerful men join and produce a 
good government based on the old system ? 



70 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

Their resources are unlimited ; they can com- 
mand the press and the orators; every pulpit 
will support them ; business interests will rally 
around them, and the important educational 
and social influences will follow them. If the 
city can be redeemed, why do not they assume 
the responsibility in the case, and cease placing 
it upon the poor and the ignorant ? 

They fail to do this because it is impossible. 
ITeither money, nor intelligence, nor unselfish 
interests, nor patriotism, can reform the gov- 
ernment of the city of New York, or of any 
other government equally cumbrous and com- 
plicated. 

The fault is not in the indifference, nor in 
the dishonesty, of the people; it lies in the 
complexities which are at war with all sound 
methods of business organization. 

No one prefers bad government, save its 
beneficiaries. 

All sane men are naturally honest, and prefer 
right ways to wrong ways. The man of feeble 
honesty is swerved by a slight interest, while 
the man of sturdy honesty is unmoved by a 
great interest. 

A liar will tell the truth unless it be to his 
interest to lie. A million times and more has 
a stranger paused on a country road, or amid 
the throngs of a great city, and asked to be 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 71 

directed on the right course. He has applied 
to all kinds of men, women and children; to 
all colors and races; to beggars, tramps, liars, 
thieves, marauders and murderers, and never 
once has he been deceived unless it was to the 
interest of his informant to deceive him. 

An honest man cannot turn a clean furrow 
with a dull plow. A rascal can turn a clean 
furrow with a sharp plow. 

A bad implement cannot produce a good re- 
sult, even in the hands of a good man. A good 
implement produces a good result in the hands 
of either a good or a bad man. 

So also honest systems produce honest re- 
sults, right systems right results, and wrong 
systems wrong results. 

The right system of government for the city 
of ]^ew York will be as a sharp plow that turns 
a clean furrow, as a good implement that does 
good work. It will be an honest system bring- 
ing honest results. 



XYIII. 

THE DEFIANCE OP THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 
PRODUCES THE REVOLUTIONIST AND THE 
ANARCHIST. 

THE board of trustees chosen through the 
Free Man's Ballot will have the task of 
organizing the city of 'New York, in 
all of its departments and machinery, upon a 
businesslike basis. This will be a heavy, but 
by no means an impossible, undertaking. 

The board will succeed if it be given freedom 
to act, to correct promptly its own errors, and 
to apply the lessons of experience. 

It will fail in so far as it is hampered and 
baffled by limitations of its own power in 
municipal affairs through legislative and con- 
stitutional prohibitions and complications. 

There is one right way, and there are many 
wrong ways, of doing everything. The right 
way can be found only in freedom. 

So long as the legislature in Albany shall 
continue to usurp the power of determiniug 
what policies and methods are best for the city 
of New York, the government of the city will 
be defective. 



THE COMINa DEMOCRACY. 73 

The people of the city should be the untram- 
meled guardians of their own interests. It by 
no means follows that the policies which would 
be best for ISTew York would also be best for 
Buffalo, or that both of these cities, if set free, 
would follow exactly parallel lines of develop- 
ment. 

The American theory of local self-govern- 
ment — that the people of the village shall con- 
trol the affairs of the village, the people of the 
county the affairs of the county, the people of 
the city the affairs of the city, and the people 
of the state the affairs of the state — is sound, 
businesslike and Democratic. 

The board of trustees, chosen under the im- 
proved system of voting, will doubtless find in 
the great and successful private business enter- 
prises its best examples for imitation in the 
reformation of the city. 

Their experiences will demonstrate how much 
authority may safely be given to the executive 
department, what standards of fitness and ca- 
pacity should be applied to employes, by what 
methods advancement may be given justly to 
the meritorious and security to the competent, 
and how partisan tests and personal favorit- 
ism may be eliminated from the public serv- 
ice. 

A thousand lessons are to be learned, but 



74 ^ THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

there is no lesson that patience and common 
sense cannot master. 

There will be the conflict of opposing theories 
and policies. It is in the nature of men to 
divide into two great bodies, the progressive 
and the non-progressive. The advance of the 
progressives are the radicals who lead some- 
times in the right and at other times in the 
wrong direction. 

The great body of the progressives move 
steadily on the line of least resistance, making 
an improvement here and lopping off an abuse 
there. They seldom move rapidly, but their 
course is forward, and their record is the his- 
tory of a nation. 

The body of the non-progressives does not 
move, but is moved. It yields slowly to pres- 
sure. Its weight tests the value of progressive 
measures. The rear-guard of the conservatives 
are the enemies of progress, the men who doubt 
all things new. They are ^' as rocks in running 
water." 

These phases of public sentiment will be re- 
flected in the political organizations of the city 
which has been set free. The names of na- 
tional parties will probably disappear in city 
politics, or take on a new and local meaning, 
since national questions will have little bearing 
on city issues. 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 75 

Small and hopeless parties, which have here- 
tofore expressed the discontent of the people 
under a political system which made them help- 
less, will doubtless cease to exist in municipal 
contests. 

The political contests in the city will be seri- 
ous battles over measures of progress, in which 
few voters will be disposed to fire a sliot in the 
air by voting with a hopeless minority. 

The apprehension that the people, if set free, 
will take up with impracticable and incendiary 
ideas, is baseless. It is the suppression of the 
people, the defiance of the will of the people, 
that produces the revolutionist and the an- 
archist. 

The mass of men are conservative. If given 
freedom, they will move slowly and cautiously; 
but the denial of freedom maddens them. 

The dangers of anarchy are infinitely greater 
in the state that denies than in the one that 
yields to the people. 



XIX. 

THE NATION WHICH CONFIDES ITS GOVERNMENT 
TO FOUR ANTAGONISTIC POWERS IS NOT A 
DEMOCRACY— IT IS AN ANARCHY. 

THE form of corporate organization that 
is best adapted to the needs of private 
business enterprises of importance is the 
same in 'Nqw York, in Illinois, in California, 
and indeed throughout the civilized world ; and 
experience has shown that this organization is 
fitted to the needs of the largest and most com- 
plicated undertakings as well as to small and 
simple ones. 

So we may assume that the form of organi- 
zation best suited to the transaction of the pub- 
lic business would be the same, in its main 
features, in all parts of our country, and in all 
of the divisions of our government — alike in 
the village, the township, the county, the city, 
the state and the nation. 

The governing board might be named the 
board of trustees, directors, managers, alder- 
men, councilmen, commissioners, representa- 
tives, congressmen, senators or governors, and 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 77 

it miglit consist of three, five, seven, fifteen, 
twenty-five, or even of a greater number of 
members. A small board would meet the re- 
quirements of a village, and a larger board of 
a city, or of a state. 

The question will arise whether a very large 
board, or congress, would be required for the 
management of the business of the general 
government. 

The suggestion will doubtless be made that 
the affairs of the nation are too vast and im- 
portant to be intrusted to a small number of 
men. It should be borne in mind, however, 
that the executive efficiency of a body of men 
does not increase with numbers. 

A large body is forced, almost invariably, to 
abdicate its main powers to a smaller central 
force, or executive committee, chosen from 
its own number, or to one man, as our national 
house of representatives, being overgrown and 
unwieldy, has been compelled to confer extraor- 
dinary authority upon its speaker, and as the 
national government has abdicated its powers, 
in a large degree, in favor of the president. 

The business of the state cannot be transacted 
by the whole people in mass. We must author- 
ize others to act for us. If we delegate our 
powers to a body composed of a very large 
number of persons, then the large body, being 



78 THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 

unwieldy, must re-delegate our powers to a 
smaller body. 

There should be no re-delegation of our gen- 
eral powers ; they should be confided to a body 
that can act, that is within itself competent and 
effective. 

If we delegate our powers to three different 
bodies and one man — to a house, a senate, a 
supreme court and a president — we may know 
that the four will be always inharmonious, and 
often in conflict, and that the public business 
wiR suffer in consequence. 

Let the reader assume for the moment that 
he is the possessor of property of great value 
and of interests of much complexity, and that 
he is compelled to be absent from the country 
for a long period. He must authorize another, 
or others, to act for him. What arrangement 
of his affairs would he make ? 

"Would he authorize one firm of lawyers to 
act for two years, and another firm of older 
lawyers to act for a longer period, and yet an- 
other firm of very old lawyers to act perma- 
nently, and one more lawyer to act for four 
years? And would he endeavor to give al- 
most equal powers to each of his four repre- 
sentatives, so that there could be little or no 
progress if all were not in accord ? 

Having created this form of entanglement, 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 79 

and having placed his interests beyond his con- 
trol, would he expect to find his property in 
good condition upon his return ? 

The reader will doubtless answer that the 
man who should think seriously of relinquish- 
ing the control of his own affairs in favor of 
four conflicting agencies would be a proper 
subject for a commission in lunacy. 

Let us assert again that our governmental 
affairs are purely business affairs — the business 
affairs of the whole people — and that they never 
will be handled correctly save upon those nat- 
ural Knes which have proved to be successful 
in private business. 

To set up four independent and conflicting 
agencies to manage the public business is as 
irrational as it would be to set up four firms of 
lawyers to manage one's private business. 

To place the public business beyond the con- 
trol of the people for four, six, ten or twenty 
years is as unwise as it would be to surrender 
the control of one's private affairs for a like 
period. 

Moreover, a divided responsibility can easily 
be shirked. The president can lay blame upon 
congress, the house upon the senate, the senate 
upon the house, and both houses upon the presi- 
dent, and these three united may place the 
responsibility upon the supreme court. 



80 THE COMINa DEMOCEACY, 

Each of these four powers may toss the 
responsibility back and forth, elude it, hide 
it and escape from it. 

The nation which confides its government to 
four inharmonious and antagonistic powers is 
not a Democracy. It is an Anarchy. 

Our people need not live in fear of the An- 
archy that may come, for Anarchy exists, and 
has long existed. It is enthroned in the con- 
stitution. 



XX. 

GOVERNMENT ON A BUSINESSLIKE BASIS-THE 
ELECTION AN APPEAL TO THE REASON AND 
CONSCIENCE OF THE VOTER. 

OPPOSITION may be anticipated to an- 
nual elections. The theory that the 
elections, under the present order, 
have been too frequent has many supporters, 
while the proposition to lengthen the presiden- 
tial term to six years, making the incumbent 
ineligible to re-election, has been received with 
some favor. 

Both of these suggestions are undemocratic, 
and are born in that distrust of the people 
which has been growing rapidly in these later 
times. 

It has indeed become the fashion, among 
those who are sometimes called the better 
classes, to deplore elections in general as a 
menace to business, and as an evil which should 
be made infrequent or even abolished. 

To lengthen the term of the presidency would 
increase the powers of that office, which are 
now too great, and would make it still more 
6 



82 THE COMINO DEMOCRACY. 

independent of the people, and hence more 
monarchical. 

To make the president ineligible to re-elec- 
tion would involve the assumption that the 
people are incompetent to pass upon his merits, 
and that he would be a better president if he 
knew that the people could never declare at the 
polls a judgment upon his administration. 

The principle underlying these theories is 
not the principle of Democracy, which trusts 
in the people ; it is the principle of absolutism, 
of autocracy, which distrusts the people. 

The plan to lengthen the term of the presi- 
dency, and to make that office more independ- 
ent of the people, would be a long stride in the 
direction of monarchy, toward which we have 
been of late drifting. 

Those who are opposed to frequent elections 
are generally in good circumstances, and many 
of them are interested in corporations. Odd 
as it may appear, none of them is opposed to 
annual elections in corporations, and it is not 
likely that one could be found who would favor 
the lengthening of the term of the presidency 
of a corporation in which he is a shareholder 
to six years, and rendering its occupant ineligi- 
ble to re-election. 

" As a stockholder," one of these would say, 
" I desire to pass judgment frequently upon the 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 83 

officials who represent me. If their adminis- 
tration merits my approval, I want to give 
them a vote of confidence ; if it meets with my 
disapproval, I should certainly be permitted to 
vote to turn them out. 

" The officers of our corporation should know 
that it is their duty to serve the stockholders. 
If elections were held infrequently, the officials 
would grow too independent and careless of 
the interests of the shareholders. They might 
do great injury to the corporation, while the 
stockholders would have no means of redress. 

'' As for the suggestion that the president of 
our corporation should be elected for a term of 
six years, and be ineligible to re-election, it is 
too unreasonable for serious discussion. He 
might be incompetent, or dishonest, or other- 
wise unfit, through every day of the six years. 
Think for a moment of the condition of a cor- 
poration in such a hole as that ! 

" In our corporation we are guided by com- 
mon sense. We elect a board of directors once 
a year. That isn't much trouble. JS'o more 
time is consumed in voting than in going to 
church on a Sunday. 

" If the directors have done well, we re-elect 
them; if they have done poorly, or if we desire 
a change of policy, we choose new men. The 
directors elect the president, or manager. They 



84: THE COMINa DEMOCRACY. 

try to get the best man in the country for that 
office. They elect him for one year, but they 
reserve the right to dismiss him at any time if 
he does not suit. He usually does suit, for the 
directors are very particular in their choice. 
They cannot afford to make a mistake. 

''To make our chief executive officer ineligi- 
ble to re-election would be unwise and unjust. 
If he is fitted for the place, we couldn't afford 
to turn him out, and it would be unfair to him 
to be dismissed. Such a suggestion could only 
be made by a man who has no comprehension 
of what business really is. 

''The corporation which would deny to its 
stockholders the right to confirm or set aside 
its officials through frequent elections, or ham- 
per its board of directors in the full control of 
its business, would inevitably go to destruc- 
tion." 

The stockholder's statement is sound. Iso 
exception can be taken to it. "We should not, 
however, ignore the fact that this Republic is 
a corporation also, in which each voter holds 
one share of stock, and that it is to the inter- 
est of these public shareholders that the affairs 
of the nation should be run upon business 
principles. 

If given the power to act, through the Free 
Man's Ballot, they would elect a competent 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 85 

board, or congress, to represent them; they 
would desire that their congress should elect 
the most capable man in the country to be 
chief executive, and they would insist that he 
should be kept in office so long as he continued 
to be efficient and in harmony with the major- 
ity, and that he should be removed upon the 
termination of his usefulness. 

It would be important also that these public 
stockholders should express their will in annual 
elections, and that their representatives should 
render an account of their stewardship once 
a year. 

The time consumed in voting at the public 
ballot box is no longer than is required at the 
polls of the private corporation. 

And it is probable that, having once estab- 
lished free, natural and businesslike conditions 
in our relations to public affairs, the great ex- 
citement and violent recriminations, the maneu- 
vering and parading and rallying, as if we were 
divided into hostile armies fighting for su- 
premacy, will disappear in political campaigns. 

There are many reasons for believing that, 
in the new and better order, appeals will be 
made to the reason and conscience, rather than 
to the passions and prejudices, of men. 

The voter's responsibility will be greatly in- 
qrestsed. He will vote directly for and against 



86 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

measures. He will comprehend the shame of 
not understanding measures. He will seek 
reasons for his choice. 

The question of candidates being left to the 
free choice of each voter at the ballot box, the 
issue in each contest will be joined upon princi- 
ples and policies. The campaign will be a com- 
prehensive discussion of measures. Its trend 
will be to the education and enlightenment of 
the people, rather than to their degradation. 



XXI. 

CORRUPTION AND MISGOVERNMENT IN WASH- 
INGTON ARE DUE LARGELY TO THE PRES- 
SURE OF SELFISH LOCAL INTERESTS. 

UNDER the Free Man's Ballot there would 
be no '^ close " states or districts to in- 
duce the expenditure of vast sums of 
money, or to invite bribery, corruption and 
intimidation. The congress would be chosen 
from the whole country, as we have shown 
that the board of trustees in ISTew York would 
be chosen from the whole city. 'No state, dis- 
trict or community would be more '' doubtful," 
in the old sense, than another. 

The proposal to dispense with state and dis- 
trict representation in Washington will arouse 
opposition. We cherish old customs and sys- 
tems, even if they be useless or wrong. 

A member of congress, under our present 
system, is compelled to give more attention to 
the peculiar interests of his own constituents 
than to the interests of the whole people. The 
peculiar interests of one constituency, so far as 
legislation is concerned, are usually in conflict 
with the interests of the whole people. 



88 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

Special interests are almost invariably dis- 
honest interests. 

The public interest requires that public build- 
ings should be located where they are really 
needed, and that expenditures for this purpose 
should be fair and reasonable. Local interest 
would secure a granite postoffice in every village. 

The public interest demands that river and 
harbor improvements should be made in the 
interest of the whole country, and upon the 
plans of broad-minded and disinterested engi- 
neers and experts. Local interest has fre- 
quently secured appropriations for useless pur- 
poses. The aggregate of these expenditures is 
large. 

Taxes for the protection of infant industries, 
if they be justifiable, should be so levied as to 
confer the most benefit and to impose the least 
injury upon the whole people. Local interest 
is greedy for taxes which will give it an unfair 
advantage. 

The early settlers in the timbered regions had 
what they called ^^logrollings." The task of 
rolling logs was too heavy for one man, so he 
invited his neighbors to help him, thereby in- 
curring an obligation to help them under sim- 
ilar circumstances. If he had invited twenty 
men, he was in honor bound to give one day's 
work to each of the twenty. 



THE COMINa DEMOCEACT. 89 

The pressure of local interests has forced our 
congressmen to organize a similar system, which 
they have also named ' ' logrolling. ' ' One mem- 
ber with a local bill goes to a hundred or more 
members and promises that he will vote for 
their bills if they will vote for his. This obli- 
gation often forces him to vote for bad and 
corrupt bills. 

A large part of the misgovernment in Wash- 
ington is due to the pressure of mean and selfish 
local interests. 

Local representation should for this reason 
alone, if for no other, be abolished. We should 
seek only that which is for the common good, 
rather than an advantage for our locality at the 
expense of the whole people. 

It will be claimed that the people require 
local representatives in Washington to secure 
information from the departments, to attend 
to pension claims, land claims, and so forth. 

Our lawmakers should not bring the pressure 
of their positions to bear on the departments, 
nor should they ask favors of public officials. 
He who accepts favors must pay for them. 

We should be done with the system by which 
the statesmen who formulate the laws and pol- 
icies of the nation are forced to be in Washing- 
ton the errand boys of their constituents. 

Local representation is much more imperfect 



90 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

than it appears to be. It takes an average of 
20,121 Democratic votes to elect a member of 
the lower house in the present congress from 
the South, while an average of 98,922 Repub- 
lican votes is required to elect a member of the 
house from the same section. 

On the other hand, the Republican senators 
from the North represent an average of 106,093 
votes, while the Democratic senators from the 
IsTorth represent an average of 2,185,050 votes. 

These inequalities run through the whole sys- 
tem of local representation. The Republicans 
of twelve states, and the Democrats of fifteen 
states, have not a single representative in either 
house of the present congress. The minority 
in these twenty-seven states are not only with- 
out representation in congress, but are actually 
misrepresented there. 



XXII. 

THE SYSTEM OF SETTING UP ONE MAN TO 
RUN AGAINST ANOTHER FOR OFFICE — THE 
IMPERIAL POWER OF THE SALOON. 

THE privilege of voting for a long list of 
candidates for office — sometimes for 
twenty or thirty men on one ticket — is 
prized by many voters. But no man should 
deceive himself with the thought that he is 
really voting for the men of his choice. He 
votes for his party's choice, and only in rare 
cases has he had any influence in making the 
nominations. He is compelled to accept the 
judgment of his party leaders. 

An able and honest private citizen would 
decline, if the privilege were offered to him, to 
name off-hand a list of twenty men to fill as 
many important offices. He would realize that 
he should know all about the men, and under- 
stand fully the nature of the offices, before 
undertaking such a task. 

"W"e must delegate the power to fill the ex- 
ecutive and clerical offices. At present we 
delegate this power to the politicians who 
make the nominations. 



92 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

With, the Free Man's Ballot we would dele- 
gate the power to competent boards — to men 
with the ability to understand the public needs, 
and the fitness of a man for a place, and who 
would be directly responsible to the people for 
their public acts. 

The Free Man's Ballot emancipates the voter 
and simplifies his task. He is now to name for 
himself in a village election the one man whom 
he prefers to represent him in the village gov- 
ernment. And so in other elections he names 
the man of his choice to represent him in the 
government of his county, city, state or nation. 

The present system of setting up one man to 
run against another for office will be found, 
upon investigation, to be a bad system. 

At present men are usually nominated for 
local offices because they are, in the language 
of politics, " good mixers. " A ^' good mixer " 
is one who can be all things to all men — a 
drinker among drinkers, a scoffer among scof- 
fers and a psalm-singer among psalm-singers. 
He is the friend of the farmer, he is devoted to 
the interests of the workingman, the saloon- 
keeper can depend upon him, and he is deeply 
interested in all popular forms of religion. 

The ''good mixer" has exceptional talents, 
but they are not of a nature which indicates 
that he is well qualified to be a treasurer, or 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 93 

sheriff, or alderman, or judge, or mayor, or 
member of the legislature, or of congress. The 
men best fitted for these places would probably 
be poor ^' mixers." 

The word '' politician " does not always con- 
fer honor upon him to whom it is applied. It 
is frequently a term of reproach. 

Why should the world ^^ politician," mean- 
ing a man who is engaged in public affairs, or 
who aspires to office, be a term of reproach if 
our political systems are correct and honest ? 

The word ''politician" is a word without 
honor because, under our present systems, the 
man who aspires to office must coax and flatter 
and fawn upon the people. 

He is in a race against one other man. He 
must get more votes than his opponent, or at 
least maintain his party vote. And hence he 
becomes everybody's friend, and haunts the 
saloons in his quest for votes, and consorts with 
the professional " vote-getters," who are often 
of the most disreputable element in the com- 
munity. 

The drinking saloon is at present the most 
powerful institution in the politics of the coun- 
try. It controls the government of our cities. 
It is frequently in the majority in a city's 
board of aldermen. It holds the balance of 
power in nearly all of the states. It caa 



94 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

change the complexion of congress, and it can, 
by using all of its strength in support of one 
of the great parties, elect the candidate of its 
choice to the presidency. 

In comparatively few districts in the United 
States does either of the two important politi- 
cal parties dare to nominate for ofl&ce a man 
who is objectionable to the saloon. 

The extraordinary power of the saloon in 
politics is due to the strife between candidates. 
It is intrenched in the system which forces can- 
didates to be or to pose as drinking men, and 
to implore the aid of the saloon. It will cease 
to exist with the other forms of rottenness per- 
taining to machine politics, when the Free 
Man's BaUot has rendered the machine power- 
less. 



XXIII. 

THE NEEDS OP DEMOCRACY WILL PRODUCE IN 
FREEDOM SINCERE AND POWERFUL MEN TO 
SERVE THE PEOPLE. 

]Sr the congress chosen through the Free 
Man's Ballot each party or cause would 
be represented in proportion to its voting 
strength. If the congress should consist of 
twenty-five members, and if the majority party 
should poll f ourteen-twenty-fif ths of the whole 
vote, it would have fourteen members of con- 
gress, while the minority party, assuming that 
there was but one, would have the remaining 
eleven members. The fourteen men having 
the highest votes on the majority ticket, and 
the eleven with the highest votes on the mi- 
nority ticket, would be elected. 

Under these conditions distinguished men 
only could be chosen for congress. "We may 
imagine that the people of the East would vote, 
as a rule, for the most prominent men repre- 
senting their cause in that section, and the 
voters of the South, the Southwest, the Pa- 
cific Coast, and of the different divisions of the 



96 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

Middle West, would vote for their strongest 
men. 

The result would be that the more important 
sections would be represented by their best 
men. Each would be the free choice of a very 
large number — probably in no case of less than 
three hundred thousand — voters. 

We may confidently assume that the congress 
so chosen would rank in dignity, integrity and 
forcefulness with any other assemblage the 
world has known. 

The supply of men is ample for all emergen- 
cies. A war produces great soldiers and gen- 
erals, an inventive period develops the ingen- 
ious, and a commercial age produces men of 
business capacity. So also other times and 
needs produce painters and poets and dream- 
ers of noble dreams, and orators whose words 
thrill for a thousand years, and thinkers and 
martyrs and saviors. 

And so will the needs of Democracy — when 
we shall have established a real Democracy — 
produce sincere and powerful men who will use 
nobly the trust that is confided to them. 

At least we should be done with false pre- 
tenses. We should admit that our vast system 
of complex government, which persistently de- 
feats the will of the people, is not a Democracy, 



THE COMINa DEMOCRACY. 97 

and that we have no right to judge Democracy 
by its counterfeit presentation. And we should 
go further and declare that, before condemning 
Democracy, we will establish a real Democracy 
and give it a fair trial. 

Under our evil forms of Democracy, we shall 
go from bad to worse. Our cities shall become 
more depraved, our politics more corrupt, our 
houses of congress more feeble, our presidency 
more kinglike, and our national government 
more than ever the prey of shameless private 
interests. 

There can be no reform under our present 
system of Democracy, for the system is itself 
rotten. We have been trying to build reforms 
upon foundations of mud and quicksand, and 
we have failed. 

Let us go down to the rock. Let us set men 
free, and then trust them. Let us open to 
mankind the control of the state, and give to 
them freedom to act, to construct, to advance, 
to err even, having also the ability to correct 
an error. Let us be done with this creeping, 
cowardly distrust of ourselves. Why should 
we, the people, be afraid of the people? 

Even if we admit a distinction of classes, 
why should the superior class be afraid of the 
common people ? The common people ask noth- 
ing of the state save that it shall be honest and 

7 



98 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

just. They ask for no subsidies, bounties, privi- 
leges, special taxes or exemptions. They have 
little hope even of small offices. 

In freedom they will act in accordance with 
their own interests, but these interests run 
counter to the interest of no honest man. 



XXIY. 

ONCE IN FORTY OR FIFTY YEARS A FREE PEO- 
PLE MUST AROUSE THEMSELVES, OR THE 
MORAL MAN WOULD DIE. 

LET US give way for a moment to the 
spokesman of Organized Politics: 
^ '' It is well to talk about what ought 
to be and might be, but you should understand 
that the task of changing the constitution is 
not an easy one. 

*^The constitution of the United States can 
be amended only by a vote of two-thirds of 
both houses of congress, or by a convention 
called on the application of the legislatures of 
two-thirds of the states; in either case the 
amendments so formulated would become valid 
only after being ratified by the legislatures of, 
or conventions in, three-fourths of the states. 

*' Your so-called reform can only be brought 
about through the cordial support of the poli- 
ticians whom it would supplant. 

'' That support can never be secured. They 
will not vote themselves out of office and out 
of influence. The politicians will stand by the 



100 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

constitution. It suits them ; and without their 
consent it will not be changed. We have pros- 
pered under it for more than a hundred years, 
and it will probably last for two or three cen- 
turies more, at least." 

If the politicians prove, in the final test, to 
be stronger than the people, then it is true that 
the constitution cannot be changed. 

That issue is yet to be decided, and the fact 
should not be ignored that the disinterested are 
overwhelmingly in the majority. A great 
majority can change the constitution. 

The claim that matters ought not to be, and 
cannot be, changed is always loudest just be- 
fore they are changed. Thrones and other in- 
stitutions of privilege are eulogized most, and 
seem to be strongest, the day before they fall. 

That which is vehemently declared to be im- 
possible nearly always happens. 

The cause of right and justice is never hope- 
less. When things grow bad enough, reform 
comes, not because we will it and desire it, but 
because it must come — because the forces of 
evil have grown strong enough to invite their 
own destruction. 

On the second day of December, 1859, a 
country boy in the West happened to be in a 
throng of people who were discussing an event 
of tragic interest, for it was the day that John 



THE COMINa DEMOCEACY. 101 

Brown was hanged. The boy heard the com- 
ments of a great number, and his heart was 
sick, for he thought that John Brown deserved 
some sympathy, at least in the ^North, and he 
heard no voice that did not speak bitterly of 
the grim old man who had died for other men 
that day. 

Sixteen months later the Korth rose almost 
as one man, singing, 

** John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave ; 
His soul is marching on." 

The boy heard these lines sung a thousand 
times afterward — by marching columns, in 
camps and trenches and prison pens, from the 
throats of great masses of men with faces illu- 
mined by a wonderful light, in hours of triumph 
and times of disaster, and once as he marched 
with a division of soldiers past the spot in Yir- 
ginia where John Brown was hanged. 

It seemed as if the soul of John Brown had 
entered into the soul of the army. The boy 
wondered, and he has never ceased wondering 
— for he and the writer of these words are one 
—at the mighty change. 

When bad grows to be wholly bad, and evil 
to be rotten, then a change comes quickly. 

Once in forty or fifty years a free people 
must arouse themselves, must have a moral 



102 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

awakening, a moral renovation, or the moral 
man would die. 

The constitution will be changed when the 
people are aroused. They have wrongs enough 
to awaken them. There are ample signs of day- 
break. The last laggard will soon be awake. 
And when the people are aroused, the placemen 
who would baffle them, the interests that would 
stay them, will be as the dry grass before the 
prairie fire. 

Keform will come; the evil features in the 
constitution wiU die. Only two questions — 
Will reform be bloodless ? and Will it be thor- 
ough ? — need reaUy disturb us. 



xxy. 

THE TRUSTS ARE BUILT ON THE ROCK OF ECON- 
OMY—THE POWER OF COMBINED WEALTH IS 
YET IN ITS INFANCY. 

NEW and startling economic conditions 
press upon us. The power of private 
wealth, which has been great in all 
stages of civilization, has now become the chief 
factor in human affairs. It dictates in large 
measure the internal and foreign policies of 
nations. 

Our own country has obeyed for a third of a 
century almost every mandate of private capi- 
tal, while England is now waging — as the civ- 
ilized world, apart from the Imperialistic party 
in England, sincerely believes — a cruel and an 
unnecessary war in South Africa, in the inter- 
est of a few rich mining corporations. 

It is evident also that private capital is only 
now beginning to learn the more important 
lessons in the art of organization. The power 
of combined wealth is yet in its infancy. The 
mind cannot grasp the full meaning of what its 
force will be in its maturity. 



104 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

The ways of l^ature seem upon the surface 
to be cruel. Why should Power and Strength 
be the pets of Nature ? Why should she lay 
tribute upon the weak for the benefit of the 
strong, rather than upon the strong for the 
benefit of the weak ? 

On the other hand, if Nature should patron- 
ize the weak and discourage the strong, would 
we not in time begin to breed weakness, and 
become a race of paupers, dependent wholly 
upon the benevolence of Nature ? 

Perhaps it is the purpose of Nature — if we 
may attribute purpose to anything so infinite 
and absolute as Nature — to produce real men, 
strong, upright and brave men. Perhaps she 
gives power to the few that she may rouse the 
spirit and elevate the thought and courage of 
the many. It would be a poor world in which 
there were no trials, difficulties or obstacles to 
overcome. 

We may also hope, and even believe, that 
Nature has presented no evil that has no rem- 
edy, no difficulty that cannot be surmounted. 
If this be so, it is plain that we should spend 
no time in whining over things that are wrong, 
but that we should go to work to set them 
right. 

Howsoever these things may be, the increas- 
ing volume and power of private capital have 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 105 

been developed and are moving forward upon 
natural lines. Human greed is a motive in the 
movement, but greed would be in this case 
powerless if it were not in harmony with 
natural conditions. 

The trusts and other combinations of capital 
are successful in the main because of the econ- 
omies produced by organization and consolida- 
tion. The system that saves money and labor 
will always defeat the system that is wasteful 
of either. E'ature abhors waste. 

The first man with a hoe Avas able to do the 
work of ten men who used their fingers. The 
hoe was a temporary curse to the nine men 
whom it supplanted, but it became a blessing 
to the race of men. 

It is a fact that nearly all reforms and im- 
provements do more harm than good at the 
start. Pulling a tooth is more painful for 
the time than was its previous aching. Our 
emancipated slaves were more wretched in 
freedom at the beginning than they had been 
in bondage. 

It is so ordered by l^ature, and doubtless 
weU ordered, that for all things man must pay 
a price, and for good things a great price. 
Even freedom has its responsibilities and pen- 
alties. 

Labor-saving machinery has come at a cruel 



106 THE COMING DEMOCRACT. 

cost. It has ruined and crushed the hopes and 
hearts of many, but in the end it is a blessing 
to mankind in general. For its victims there 
is no consolation save in religion, or in the 
thought that they are the martyrs of human 
progress. 

In a better stage of civilization, such as we 
may conceive to be possible in the future, there 
may be an acknowledgment that such unfortu- 
nates are the creditors of society as legitimately 
as those who hold the bonds of the nation. 

The trusts also are labor-saving machines. 
They are built on the rock of economy. A 
trust combines five, twenty or fifty concerns, 
and reduces expenses by discharging superflu- 
ous employes, and by closing poorly equipped 
or badly located houses or mills. 

It uses the best machinery, methods and 
processes. It usually improves its product 
while increasing its earnings. 

Two or three small houses may refuse to go 
into the trust. They would be independent; 
they prefer the old ways. Soon they feel the 
pinch of hard competition. The trust can un- 
dersell them; perhaps it can furnish a better 
product. It has a more complete organization; 
it covers more strategic points; it has more 
money ; it is in alliance with other great inter- 
ests; it can control experts and inventors; it 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 107 

may secure better rates from the railroads, or 
even favors from the government. 

The small houses that refused to yield must 
yield. They will be fortunate if they can still 
make good terms. 

Sometimes an important house refuses to go 
into a trust. This usually delays the combina- 
tion for the time. Some of the earlier trusts 
made imperfect combinations, leaving large 
houses outside. The results were unsatisfac- 
tory. The cost of fighting the strong houses 
neutralized the gains of consolidation, l^ow 
capital will not back the trust that does not 
monopolize all of the more important concerns 
in one branch of industry. 



XXVI. 

ALL OF THE INDUSTRIES FITTED BY THEIR 
NATURE FOR COMBINATION WILL BE FORCED 
INTO THE TRUSTS. 

ArOECE stronger even than greed is driv- 
ing a vast number of industries into 
combination. This force is competi- 
tion. Free and unrestricted competition pre- 
vents extortion, reduces profit to moderate 
proportions, and sometimes destroys it wholly. 
Free competition is often destructive to large 
concerns. If two important railroads, reach- 
ing the same points, were to bid against each 
other for ail traffic, both would be ruined. The 
largest enterprises are impelled by the fear 
of loss, quite as much as by the hope of gain, 
to guard against the destructive influences of 
competition. 

A bare subsistence is not profit. A fair re- 
turn for labor, ability, thought or genius is not 
profit. Profit is defined as '* acquisition with- 
out expenditure." Undue profit may be called 
extortion, which is secured rarely, save through 
some form of combination or monopoly. 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 109 

Since competition is the deadly enemy of ex- 
tortion, it is evident that I^ature abhors all ex- 
tortion as well as all waste. Here is a gleam of 
light. Perhaps Nature's ways are not such 
bad ways, after all. True, the monopolists 
have profits of vast magnitude. But they are 
of this generation, and a generation is a brief 
time in the life of a race. 

The very large industries, such as the rail- 
roads, can usually agree upon rates or a division 
of business. Not so, however, with the manu- 
facturing and commercial houses. With these 
competition grows fierce, and, in accordance 
with its nature, consumes profit. Practically 
all of them will be forced in time to choose 
between bankruptcy and combination. 

Nearly all of the important commercial, 
manufacturing and transportation industries 
of the country are well fitted by their nature 
for combination. 

We may confidently assume that all of these 
industries, which are not otherwise protected 
by monopoly, will inevitably be driven by the 
force of competition, or by the advantages of 
economy, into the trusts. 

The trusts will manufacture all goods of im- 
portance, transport them to the markets and 
sell them to the public. The small retail houses 
in the larger towns and cities will in the main 



110 THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 

disappear. Their functions will be absorbed 
by the great stores, and the agencies of other 
trusts. 

Drummers and solicitors will be discharged, 
brokers and other middlemen will be dispensed 
with, and the business of the wholesale houses 
reduced to the trade of the small towns and 
country communities, and it is a question 
whether this trade will escape from the trusts. 

The product of the farmer will be accepted 
by a trust at the railroad station, handled by 
trusts in all its stages, and delivered by a trust 
to the consumer. The farmer will get what 
the trust chooses to pay him. 

The consumer will pay for the farmer's prod- 
uct what the traffic will bear. All of the peo- 
ple will be in the employ of, or under tribute to, 
the trusts. 




XXYII. 

THE INEVITABLE EVOLUTION OF ALL TRUSTS 
INTO ONE TRUST, OR ONE FEDERATION OF 
TRUSTS. 

E are assuming that the trusts will pro- 
ceed without interference upon their 
natural lines of evolution. There 
will be interferences, but let us trace further 
their natural course, if unobstructed. 

In time there will be one trust larger and 
stronger than any other. Without doubt this 
will be the transportation trust. But for the 
fear of adverse legislation, the railroads of the 
country would have been consolidated before 
this time. The economies and other advan- 
tages of this consolidation would be many. 
The leading railroad interests are already in 
the hands of a few men. 

So we may assume that, after the status of 
the trusts has been fully established in the 
courts, and the futility of all anti-trust legisla- 
tion has been demonstrated, the great railroad 
trust will enter the field, overshadowing the 
other trusts, with one exception to be named 



112 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

later, as the Eockies overshadow their foot- 
hills. 

It is in the nature of a trust to gather unto 
itself other industries that are akin to its own 
activities. An oil combination reaches out for 
the concerns that deal in light, heat and lubri- 
cation — for gas, electricity and steam — and the 
possession of these makes the parent concern 
akin to power and traction, and other things 
analogous. And so the circle widens. 

The railroad trust will naturally look about 
for its kindred. It will take in the steamship 
lines, inland and outland. Being already the 
owner of the most important coal mines, it will 
see the necessity of controlling the whole coal 
industry. This will be easy. It Avill only be 
necessary to raise the price of transporting coal 
to a rate which destroys the miner's profit. 
He will then desire to sell his mine, and there 
will be only one buyer. 

The same process will force the owners of 
mines of iron, lead, zinc, copper, silver and 
gold, and also of quarries of all grades of stone, 
to capitulate. 

The railroad trust is closely related to iron. 
The great iron manufacturing trusts must give 
way to the railroad trust. They have had 
their little day of profit and glory, but they 
must now yield to a greater power, even as 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 113 

in other days the smaller industries yielded 
to them. 

Iron is akin to all machinery, manufacturing 
and building, and the proud trusts built upon 
these industries must bow their necks to the 
railroad trust. 

I^early all forms of commerce and industry 
will be powerless in conflict with the transpor- 
tation trust. 

One combination only, the great banking 
trust, could even dare to offer the gage of bat- 
tle to the railroad trust. The banking trust 
will be made up of the great financial institu- 
tions of the country, the small enterprises of 
this nature having been absorbed or reduced to 
a state of feebleness and dependency. It will 
preside over the kingdom of money, an interest 
more closely allied even than transportation 
with aU of the business affairs of the peo- 
ple. 

There can, however, be no battle royal, or 
conflict of any serious nature, between the rail- 
road trust and the banking trust, for the same 
men and interests will of necessity dominate 
both. They will be as the two hands of one 
body, obeying the will of the richest and most 
powerful group of men that the world has ever 
known. They may be two trusts in name, but 
they will be one trust in fact. These two in- 



114 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

separable powers may be named the Federation 

of Trusts. 

Whether the Federation of Trusts will choose 
to crush the smaller trusts, or whether it will 
offer fair terms for absorption, presents grounds 
for conjecture. 

The crushing power of the Federation will 
be irresistible. There is not much generosity 
in business. Men do not usually pay more 
than they have to pay. Yet vast power is 
sometimes gracious, and on the surface gen- 
erous. 

Napoleon patronized and protected some of 
the powers that submitted to him. The first 
kaiser of United Germany placated, with empty 
titles and substantial estates, the kings and 
princes whom he had supplanted. But E'apo- 
leon and Wilhelm were less powerful and less 
absolute than our Federation of Trusts will be. 

Sufficient be it for us to know that, as many 
of the small enterprises of this day must, for 
the sake of efficiency, order and economy, give 
way to larger concerns, so these must yield in 
time to still larger ones, and this process will 
be continued until all the business enterprises 
of the country that are fitted by their nature 
for combination shall be joined in one federa- 
tion. 

The enterprises that are fitted by nature for 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 115 

combinatioii are those which can be operated 
more economically and efficiently on a large 
than on a small scale. Up to this time no limit 
has been found to the efficiency and economy 
of operations on a large scale. 

The concern which does a business of ten 
millions a year is more efficient and economical 
than the one which does a business of a mil- 
lion a year, while the one which does a busi- 
ness of a hundred millions is still more capable, 
and yet it will be outdone by the one with a 
business of a thousand millious. 

There would seem to be no limit to the ad- 
vantages of combination save in its uttermost 
expansion — in the practical absorption into one 
of all industries adapted to the large scale of 
operations. 

Legal obstacles and adverse public sentiment 
aside, this process will probably reach its cul- 
mination in a comparatively short term of 
years. 



XXYIII. 

THE GREAT CORPORATION IS FOREVER AT THE 
ZENITH OF ITS POWERS, SERENE IN IMPE- 
RIAL STRENGTH AND IMMORTAL LIFE. 

BUT legal obstacles and adverse public sen- 
timent must be reckoned Avith. Our 
complex and imperfect forms of govern- 
ment, state and national, are to be subjected to 
a strain such as they have not known before. 

Panaceas are to be presented which will 
change the laws of l!^ature. Politicians are to 
write platforms denouncing the evils of the 
great aggregations of capital, while they hold 
in their pockets the retaining fees of the trusts. 
Constitutional amendments are to be proposed 
with the expectation that they will be rejected. 
Promises are to be made by both political 
parties to be broken, and laws are to be 
enacted which the lawmakers know will be 
ineffective. 

The trusts are to engage nearly all of the 
great lawyers in the different states to soothe 
and pacify legislators, to tie knots and dig holes 
and pitfalls and weave complications in statutes, 



THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 117 

and to confuse judges with time-worn prece- 
dents and moldy authorities. 

The money of the trusts is to flow like water 
in all of the capitals of the country, and a wave 
of prosperity is to encompass those who do the 
corrupt work of the industrial combinations. 

Great constitutional questions are again to 
be considered and argued, and reconsidered and 
reargued, in all of the states and in Washing- 
ton. Decisions are to be made and reversed, 
and to be reaffirmed and reversed again. The 
judges are to be of as many minds as the people. 

The great court in Washington is to sit in 
solemn judgment to determine finally the mean- 
ing of the constitution of the United States in 
regard to trusts; and, as the authors of the 
constitution were all dead before the first trust 
was thought of, we can conceive that the judges 
will arrive at a clear conclusion with some 
difficulty. 

The legislation and judicial rulings in one 
state will be in conflict with the laws and de- 
cisions in other states. This jumble in laws 
and conflict in authorities will give comfort 
to the magnates of the trusts. 

Some state will doubtless prohibit the busi- 
ness of the trusts within its borders. It will 
discover that the product of one or more of the 
trusts is vital to its people. It will be com- 



118 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

pelled to recede from its position, and the trusts 
will score a point. 

The final victory may seem to be in doubt 
for a long time. An advantage wiU be gained 
here and lost there, but the result will be at no 
time in doubt. The power of combined cap- 
ital will of necessity be stronger than the peo- 
ple, acting under a complicated and an irre- 
sponsive system of government. 

It is doubtful that a government could be 
devised which would be more perfectly fitted 
to the needs of organized capital than our own. 

The important moneyed interests act through 
the corporation. The corporation is long-lived. 
It dies not ; it is of the immortals. It is never 
in a hurry. We mortals must hurry, for to- 
morrow we die. 

The great corporation is patient, serene in 
imperial strength and immortal life. Men may 
worry for it, but the corporation never worries. 
Men may wear themselves out in its service; 
other men can be had to fill their places. 

'Nqw blood flows constantly into the arteries 
of the corporation; it is perpetually at the 
zenith of its powers. It can act as swiftly as 
the lightning, or it can wait for many years. 

Our slow, cumbrous, torpid government is 
the helpless prey of the alert powers which 
represent financial interests. Let us interpret, 



THE COMINa DEMOCRACY, 119 

if we can, the thoughts of the great Moneyed 
Interest, in connection with the trust problem: 

" Let us see. Public sentiment is against us; 
it is always against us. Some of our people 
think that we are to have more trouble this 
time than ever before. Yery likely. 

" Our fighting power is good. In fact, we 
haven't yet begun to fight. The little affrays 
we've had up to this time have been only skir- 
mishes. When we call out our big guns and 
reserves, then there'll be real fighting. 

'^ "We shall be on hand in every presidential 
contest. A president cannot be elected who 
will go back on us completely. 

''We shall concentrate our forces in the 
* close ' states. We must keep a sharp eye on 
the senate from this time on. We must have 
men there who can be relied on. 'No senatorial 
contest shall be neglected. The senators hold 
for six years. By paying particular attention 
to the senatorial elections, we can control that 
body for a long time. 

" Then there is the supreme court. We must 
Use our influence to get conservative and safe 
men appointed to fill vacancies. 

'' The constitution is a wonderful document. 
How human wisdom could have devised any- 
thing so perfect passes my comprehension. It 
protects great interests thoroughly. It gives the 



120 THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 

people time to cool off and get tired when they 
are in the wrong. Why, they have voted 
against us about two-thirds of the time for the 
last thirty years, but they haven't disturbed us 
in the least. 

'' There were famous demagogues back there 
in the seventies, who threatened us. They're 
all dead now, or senile. But we're still hearty, 
thank you! We're fully five times as big and 
strong as we were then, and are growing every 
day. "We're not vv^orrying. The constitution 
gives us plenty of time. And the courts give 
us more time. 

'' There's another great principle — that the 
supreme court shall define the meaning of the 
laws and the constitution. What a check that 
is upon hasty and improper legislation ! 

''The constitution couldn't possibly be ex- 
plicit on every point, so it authorized a court, 
whose members hold office for life, to decide 
what the constitution could, would or should 
have meant. Popular clamor has no effect on 
this court. Its decisions stand, unless they are 
reversed by the court itself. They become as 
much a part of the constitution as the original 
instrument. 

'' If you want to know what the constitution 
really is, you'll not get much information out 
of the original copy, with the formal amend- 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 121 

ments. You'll have to go through the four- 
teen thousand (or maybe it's fourteen hundred) 
volumes of the decisions of the supreme court. 
When you've got all of these rulings clearly 
fixed in your mind, then you'll begin to under- 
stand the constitution. 

'' We have usually found the courts, and espe- 
cially the big courts, fair and conservative. If 
we doubt them, then our lawyers can tangle 
things up so as to prevent a decision for from 
three to fifteen years. We have frequently 
delayed matters long enough to let a bad judge 
die. 

*' It amuses me to see the people assemble in 
great conventions, and solemnly impeach us, 
and declare that whereas and wherefore, and 
therefore be it resolved that they are going to 
reduce our powers and impair our influence. 
And I suppose they'd do it if it weren't for the 
surpassing wisdom and foresight of the men 
who made the constitution. As it is, we ex- 
pect to be alive and prosperous long after the 
last one of these grumblers and anarchists has 
died of old age." 



XXIX. 

THE ISSUE OF COMBINED WEALTH PRESSES UPON 
AND MENACES US— THE LINE OF CLASSES. 

^ I '^HE trusts are developing in harmony with 
I the laws of J^ature which work in favor 
^ of economy and of business operations 
on a large scale. It is not likely, therefore, 
that human wisdom could devise a law that 
would change the irresistible tendency of busi- 
ness toward the larger scale of operations, and 
serve at the same time the permanent interests 
of the people. 

Statute law may retard, but it cannot de- 
stroy, the operation of natural law. We can 
dam a river, but in time it will overflow our 
obstruction. 

Three facts are now plain : 

1. The securing of effective legislation to re- 
press the formation and development of the 
trusts, and of other dangerous aggregations of 
capital, is practically hopeless under our slow 
and complicated systems of government. 

2. Even if such legislation should be secured, 
it would be of doubtful value, since the natural 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 123 

law works in favor of business operations on 
a large scale. 

3. If the trusts are permitted to develop in 
freedom, the unification of the great moneyed 
interests of the country into one organization 
or federation of capital, of a magnitude here- 
tofore undreamed of, will folloAV. It will 
dominate our public affairs, and establish a far- 
reaching and consuming system of oppression 
intolerable to a free people. 

Mankind are prone to overestimate the his- 
toric importance of the ordinary events and 
issues of their own time and country. The 
near object is larger to our senses than the far 
one. The hill that bounds our village seems 
taller to us than the Hockies or the Alps. 

On the other hand, the iniportance of a really 
great issue is usually underestimated. Our op- 
timism leads us to believe that it is not really 
so remarkable or so threatening as it appears 
to be. 

Doubtless no man in France could have an- 
ticipated the full magnitude of the Terror, 
while the suggestion of the possibility of civil 
war in the United States over the question of 
slavery was lightly considered prior to the 
summer of 1860, and even after the conflict 
had begun there were wise men who were 



124: THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

sure that it would not last more than ninety 
days. 

Crises of great importance in the affairs of a 
nation do not come frequently, yet there is no 
absolute exemption from them. The serious- 
ness of our own impending issues may be over- 
estimated by most of us, or it may be under- 
estimated. 

Certain it is that there are unusual forebod- 
ings of evil in the minds of the people. And 
there have been some signs of a coming con- 
flict. Blood has been shed iu warfare between 
organized labor and organized capital. 

The line between classes grows sharper and 
clearer, and each class distrusts and fears the 
other. The two prominent political parties 
are gradually becoming adjusted in the I^orth 
to the line of classes — the one representing the 
contented, the well-to-do and the rich, while 
the other stands for the discontented and the 
poor. 

The capitalistic interests have had reasons to 
be well satisfied with the government up to the 
present time. It has served them well. 

Yet it is plain that, when the line of classes 
has adjusted itself more completely to the line 
of political parties — and there is no reason to 
doubt that this will ultimately be accomplished 
— the well-to-do and the rich will be in a hope- 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY, 125 

less minority, for the discontented greatly out- 
number the contented. 

Our government is slow and irresponsive, 
but it will yield in time to overwhelming and 
long-repeated majorities. If it should go com- 
pletely into the hands of the discontented, as 
it almost certainly will go in time, then they 
might intrench themselves behind the checks 
and balances of the constitution, and defy the 
popular will, if it should turn against them, for 
a long period. 

Then they might deride the evils of hasty 
and improper legislation, and applaud the sys- 
tem which enables a political party once com- 
pletely in power to perpetuate its rule long 
after it has been repudiated by the people. 

The strengthening of the line of classes is 
perhaps the most menacing feature of our po- 
litical life. It threatens to assume the propor- 
tions of a bitter and prolonged feud, in which 
one class will seek to triumph over and humili- 
ate the other, the questions of right and wrong 
being kept mainly in the background. 

The overwhelming majority of men of all 
classes want nothing but justice. They differ 
in their views of methods, but what they 
believe to be right they maintain. 

The menace of a conflict between classes can 
be avoided only by the reformation and recon- 



126 THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 

struction of our defective systems of govern- 
ment, and by the application of natural reme- 
dies to the evils of the industrial aggregations 
which have grown up in harmony with natural 
law. 




XXX. 

THE PEOPLE ARE STRONGER THAN THE TRUSTS 
—THE WEAK MUST FOREVER GIVE WAY TO 
THE STRONG. 

UT what could an honest and efficient 
government do ? " we are asked. 
'^ You say that the trusts are develop- 
ing on natural lines; that business operations 
on a large scale are more economical and per- 
fect than operations on a small scale, and you 
even justify the trust people by saying that 
some of them are forced into the combinations 
to save their profits, which would otherwise 
disappear. 

''If these things are true, what should the 
most perfect government that could be devised 
do, except to legalize the trusts, justify them, 
and then let them alone ? And if they should 
develop, upon natural lines, in the further evo- 
lution of business operations on a large scale, 
into one trust, or one federation of trusts, 
should not this also be legalized and justified 
by the government ? " 

An honest and efficient government should 



128 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

not legalize an organization in private hands of 
the proportions which the trusts will inevitably 
assume, because in doing so it would establish 
within the state a private interest which would 
become more powerful than the state, and 
which would enable the few who own it to 
oppress the many who have no interest in 
it. 

A just government should deal justly with 
the combinations of capital and with the peo- 
ple. It should say to the Federation of Trusts: 

'' You have developed upon natural economic 
lines. You have demonstrated the great util- 
ity of business operations on a large scale, 
which will be in the end a blessing to the 
people. You have developed great enter- 
prises and great power. It will be evident 
in time that, regardless of your motives, you 
have rendered a service to mankind. 

^'But the power which you possess is too 
great to remain in private hands. You have 
discovered a principle in N^ature by which you 
could make the people your slaves. This you 
shall not do. 

'' You have demonstrated the power of com- 
bined capital. But there is a combination of 
capital stronger than yours. It is the com- 
bination of the capital of all the people, as 
represented in their government. 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 129 

'' Your enterprises sliall become the property 
of the people, to be run by them in their inter- 
est, and in your interest, for you also are of the 
people. 

" Your evolution, which has been in harmony 
with natural law, has not reached its comple- 
tion in you. Back in your infancy you said to 
the very weak : ' Give way to me, for I am the 
stronger ! I^ature loves the strong and despises 
the weak. Give way to me ! ' And they gave 
way. You said again and again to your weaker 
members, and to the people: ' Give way to me, 
ye feeble ones ! I am the chosen of N'ature. I 
alone am in harmony with E"ature, for I am 
mighty and powerful. Give way ; give way ! ' 
And they gave way. 

'' You have grown to vast proportions. You 
stride the earth. Alexander and Caesar and 
ISTapoleon dreamed of no such conquests as you 
have made. You have grown insolent and 
arrogant, for insolence and arrogance grow 
out of unbridled power. 

''But Nature's cycle is incomplete in you. 
The People, who are stronger than you, say to 
you: ' Give way, for you are weak. You 
thought that you were strong, but you are 
weak. We are stronger than any other earthly 
force. You thought that you could defeat and 
enslave us. You are very feeble, and you have 



130 THE COMING DEMOCEACY, 

dreamed foolish dreams. Give way to the 
stronger; give way to the People ! ' 

'^ The people will pay for your property. 
They will deal more justly with 3^ou than you 
have sometimes dealt with them. The people 
are so rich, now that they begin to understand 
their resources and powers, that they will make 
no reprisals on you, nor will they haggle with 
you. 

' ' Assume no longer that you are the favorite 
of IS^ature, who has no favorites. J^ature raises 
up the strong to try them. She produces in- 
equalities in human affairs to arouse the cour- 
age, the resourcefulness and the manhood of 
the people. Those who think not, feel not, 
care not, go on to the destruction that they 
have earned. 

'^ But these people here are not yet ripe for 
destruction. They have in their veins the 
blood of the picked free men of the earth — of 
the strong, the aspiring and the daring, who 
left the Old World to improve their conditions, 
and who founded a free nation based upon the 
immortal truth of the equality of human rights. 
You cannot deceive them; you cannot enslave 
them. 

^^ They are the descendants of those who 
gave their blood freely to establish, and again 
to maintain, this Republic. Did you think in 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 131 

your folly that they could be undone by the 
growth of commerce, by the tricks of the count- 
ing-house, by the shrewd games of barter and 
trade ? 

'' You have been as a child playing with fire. 
Know that the authors of schemes against the 
well-being of the people, such as you have been 
hatching, are sometimes consumed in violence. 
Be thankful that the people have grown wiser 
and cooler. Go forth now in j^our shriveled 
pride, and rejoice that they have not dealt 
more harshly with you! " 



XXXI. 

IN ANSWER TO THOSE WHO DISTRUST AN EX- 
PANSION OF THE FREEDOM AND POWERS OF 
THE PEOPLE. 

THAT any form of government, however 
perfect, could handle efficiently and 
honestly a large business enterprise, 
such as the railroad system of the country, 
will be disputed. 

It can be said in answer that many of the 
states of Europe do own and operate success- 
fully the railroads within their borders. 

Under public ownership the transportation 
business would be simplified in important par- 
ticulars. The problems of competition, includ- 
ing agreements and pools with rival lines, which 
are now a heavy burden upon the strongest 
railroad men in the country, who are compelled 
to give their main attention to the pacification 
of the discontented or to the crushing of the 
weak, would disappear. 

And so also the legal broils in which so many 
railroads are engaged would cease to exist, as 
would the lobbies to promote or defeat legisla- 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 133 

tion, and the elaborate organizations to prune 
and avoid taxes. 

The business enterprises which are now con- 
ducted by the nation, or by local communities, 
in the interest of the people, are by no means 
wholly failures. It is a significant fact that 
our government in its different branches has 
succeeded better in the management of under- 
takings which might have been left to private 
enterprise than in its purely public func- 
tions. 

The postoffice is fairly well conducted, and 
in view of the fact that it is managed largely 
as a political machine, is remarkably success- 
ful. The fire departments of the cities are 
usually handled with the utmost efficiency, 
while the failures and scandals in the public 
school system of the country are few, in pro- 
portion to its magnitude. 

If these things can be under governments 
which are usually inefficient and corrupt, we 
may hope for far better results under govern- 
ments which will be capable and honest. 

Moreover, we have at present many very im- 
portant enterprises, of the nature of savings 
banks — corporations without stockholders or 
owners — that are managed usually with much 
efficiency and fidelity by boards of trustees, in 
the interest of the depositors or other bene- 



134: THE COMING DEMOCRACY.. 

ficiaries. These are really public business en- 
terprises. 

The thoughtless might say that the intricate 
business of banking could not be managed by 
and for the public. Yet the savings banks are 
run in the public interest and under public con- 
trol. In nearly all of the states, the officials of 
the savings banks have no proprietary interest 
in these institutions. These officers handle 
with fidelity over two thousand million dollars 
of the people's money. 

Tliere are more than five million depositors 
in the savings banks of the United States, each 
one of whom is a witness that business enter- 
prises of magnitude can be run successfully 
under public management, and purely for the 
benefit of the people. 

JSTone of the human material required for the 
perfect organization of business — the engineers, 
inventors, adepts and men of executive ability 
and commanding force — would be lacking under 
public ownership. 

These are the men who really manage the 
great business enterprises now under private 
control, and to whose superior skill and ability 
the greatest corporations in the country con- 
stantly defer. 

These resourceful men, under present condi- 
tions, are frequently compelled to divide their 



THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 135 

honors with the sons and other kinsmen of the 
owners, as Yon Moltke was forced, in the 
Franco- German war, to share his honors with 
the scions of the royal house of Prussia. 

Under public ownership of the public utili- 
ties, these men of great genius for practical 
business, who are now little known outside of 
their own circles, will become well known to 
the people; they will be famous, and the names 
of some of them may even be immortal. 

The forces of competition will still be at work 
in the public enterprises — the competition of 
men in the public service who desire to im- 
prove their fortunes, to excel, to win an honor- 
able position, to stand well with their fellows. 

The spirit of emulation which leads men to 
hazard their lives for the sake of honorable 
mention, of promotion or of duty, in the mili- 
tary branch of the public service, will not be 
lacking, under free and natural conditions, in 
its civil divisions. 



XXXII. 

THE COMING AGE OF HONESTY AND JUSTICE— 
THOSE WHO SERVE THE PUBLIC WILL SERVE 
FAITHFULLY. 

THE resourcefulness, shrewdness and self- 
seeking of large masses of private cap- 
ital will alone be lacking in public 
enterprises. Let us not underestimate the 
power of human interest, of human selfishness. 

Have we, however, any sound reason for 
assuming that the interest of the whole people, 
each one having a small holding, will be less 
effective than the interest of a small number 
with great holdings ? 

It will be said that the small number have 
greater powers of concentration than the large 
number, as a hundred men can move more 
quickly and co-operate more effectively than 
a million. But the few must act, in this case, 
through the machinery of the corporation, and 
the people must adopt the same mechan- 
ism. 

The private capitalists must delegate their 
powers to a small board; the congress of the 



THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 137 

nation must also authorize a small board to 
manage the public industries. We have no 
reason to assume that this board, representing 
the whole people, will not be as sw^ift, resource- 
ful, alert and forceful as the board chosen by 
the capitalists. 

Human interest, human selfishness and all 
other motives, good and bad, which work for 
success, including human ambition and hope 
and pride and unselfishness and love, will be 
actively enlisted in the public enterprises. The 
heart of each man, woman and child will swell 
with satisfaction and pride in the joint owner- 
ship of great wealth, and in the joint control 
of vast power. 

'^ This line of rails," each one will say, " this 
noble bridge, this imposing building, all of 
these vast and perfect industries, are mine as 
much as they are any one's. A million serv- 
ants wait upon me. They may be found in 
every nook and corner of the land, and even 
of the whole world, seeking to provide for my 
wants and pleasures. A thousand palaces are 
mine. My carriages await me wherever I go; 
my ships sail for me from every port. 

" Do I desire that my servants shall be dull, 
or negligent, or treacherous, or dishonest ? By 
no means. I will tolerate none of these, for 
this is the age of honesty and justice, when 



138 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

men must earn what they get, and they who 
serve must serve faithfully. 

'^ I am so rich and powerful that I envy no 
man, and yet no man envies me, for my breth- 
ren also are rich and powerful. They serve 
me no more than I serve them. The poorest 
among us is rich and strong, and those of 
greater fitness and capacity are still richer and 
stronger in accordance with their merits. For 
justice has solved all things. Ah, the world is 
sweet and fair since justice has come ! 



5) 



XXXIII. 

BEFORE THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CEN- ^ 

TURY A CITY IN AMERICA WILL HAVE A . ^| ^ 
POPULATION OF TWENTY MILLIONS. ^^ L^'tJ 

THE future historian who shall write the ^^ 
story of these times will doubtless dis- 
cover the most important phase of our 
American civilization in the enormous growth 
of private wealth, and in the corresponding 
expansion of private business enterprise. 

"We may also anticipate that, as he passes on 
to a later period, he will discover that the 
splendors of private wealth were but as a faint 
prophecy of the greater splendors of our public 
wealth, and that the achievements of private 
business enterprise were even small compared 
with the achievements of public business enter- 
prise. 

I^owhere perhaps will public enterprise have 
a fairer field of development than in the city 
of the future, the city of civilization. 

Let us return to the city of New York, to 
consider its possibilities. Here, as in all other 
towns and cities, we find a grave problem in 



14:0 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

the private ownership of the urban land, which 
has grown to be enormously valuable through 
the growth of population. 

The people in mass, through their aggrega- 
tion, have produced the excessive value of the 
land. 

The private ownership of land has always 
been recognized by us. The title to a large 
part of the land goes back to the government 
itself, which sold the public domain to individ- 
uals. Titles have passed in innumerable cases, 
the '^ unearned increment" has been secured 
by persons now dead, and by others who have 
sold their holdings, and are no longer land- 
holders. 

Only in rare cases have the present owners 
secured exorbitant ^'unearned increment;" 
many are even holding land which is worth 
less than it cost them. 

It is plain, under the circumstances, that the 
confiscation of the land, through taxation or 
otherwise, would be an act of injustice. But 
it is evident also that the system by which 
values earned by the public are appropriated 
by individuals should be placed, as Lincoln said 
of slavery in 1858, ^^in the course of ultimate 
extinction." 

The cities have not yet reached their full 
growth; they have only begun to grow. Be- 



THE COMINa DEMOCKACT. 141 

fore tlie end of the twentieth century there 
will be a city in America with a population of 
twenty millions, and many other cities of enor- 
mous size. There are tracts of land now of 
little value upon which great masses of people 
will yet live, and which will be much increased 
in value thereby. 

It would be difficult to find on Manhattan 
island at the present time an acre of land 
within eight miles of the Battery that could be 
bought for less than $100,000. The average 
value is more than double that figure. There 
are large areas that are worth $500,000 an 
acre, and there are tracts of no small propor- 
tions that are worth $1,000,000 an acre, and 
there are still other plots that are worth from 
$2,000,000 to $3,000,000 an acre. 

These values are unnatural and artificial, the 
result of a great congestion of population and 
business, which adequate systems of transpor- 
tation will relieve. They will shrivel in time, 
and under the power of public enterprise, to 
more natural proportions. 

The development of our great cities is ob- 
structed at present by state legislation, the 
interests back of the state being usually out of 
harmony with, and sometimes hostile to, the 
interests of the city. 

The metropolis must in time be set free from 



14:2 THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 

all external interferences with its local affairs. 
This emancipation can be accomplished com- 
pletely through the formation of a metropolitan 
state which will include the region within say 
fifty miles of the heart of the present city of 
'New York, embracing portions of the states of 
New Jersey and Connecticut — a district large 
enough to include within its boundaries the 
whole of the possible future growth of the city. 
The boundaries of the city may be the same 
as the boundaries of the state, or a number of 
separate towns and cities may be organized, 
their varying interests being harmonized 
through the government of the metropolitan 
state. We shall assume for the present, and 
for the sake of clearness only, that the state 
and the city will be one. 



XXXIY. 

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE— ON THE FACE OF 
THIS PLANET THERE IS ROOM FOR ALL. 

THE city should build, from time to time, 
such systems of swift transit as are re- 
quired to open homes and opportunities 
for its increasing population. These lines will 
reach out into tlie regions of cheap land. 

The city should condemn and purchase the 
cheap land contiguous to each line as it is built 
or opened, paying the price it was worth be- 
fore the public enterprise shall have enhanced 
it. This will be just and fair. The owners 
will get what their land is worth. The whole 
people will get the increased value which the 
whole people have produced, and the full bene- 
fits of the public enterprise. 

The land so acquired will be laid out upon 
scientific principles for the use of the people. 
The most expert landscape architects and civil 
and sanitary engineers will be employed to pro- 
duce plans as nearly perfect as human thought, 
learning and experience can devise. 

Certain streets will be yielded to business. 



144 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

with reasonable restrictions. Districts adapted 
to manufacturing will be assigned to that use, 
ample facilities being furnished for power and 
transportation. The streets designed for sepa- 
rate residences will be protected for that pur- 
pose. Other streets will be given to apart- 
ments, to clubs and to co-operative homes. 

The people will be supplied Avith water, 
electric currents, telephones, light and heat, 
through the public service, at cost, or at a fig- 
ure little above cost. The advantages of pri- 
vate co-operation and public combination will 
be fully utilized. 

Drudgery will be reduced to meager propor- 
tions. The mother in the household will be 
released from exhausting toil and from many 
petty cares. Waste will be extinguished, and 
perhaps menial service will disappear, those 
who have been servants ascending to a better 
plane in life. 

The new district will be planned upon the 
lines of econom}^, utility, beauty and whole- 
someness. It will supply the maximum of 
comfort with the minimum of labor. Its 
death rate will be as low as science can re- 
duce it. 

The title to the land will remain forever in 
the public. The occupant will pay a reason- 
able ground-rent for a plot. lie Avill own and 



THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 145 

construct his own building, which he may sell, 
subject to the ground-rent, as leaseholds are 
now sold. The expense of owning a home 
will be the cost of a house. The number of 
home-owners will be greatly increased. 

The revenue from the land will in time pay 
for the land, for its improvement, and for the 
system of rapid transit to it; and at a later 
time it will yield a large and permanent income 
to the city. Other districts will be developed 
in the same way. The superior advantages oC 
the suburbs will draw the people out of the old 
city. Its tenements will be forsaken; its fire- 
traps and its slums will be abandoned. 

The city, through its control of the public 
utilities, and through co-operation with the 
national government, which will now be the 
owner and master of the great industries of 
general importance, will be able to regulate 
the location of the more important business 
plants, each industry being given that place 
which will be best fitted for its uses, its em- 
ployes having homes in the same neighborhood, 
that there may be no waste of time and money 
in traveling to and from work. 

The center of this vast field of activity will 
possibly drift in time from Manhattan island. 
Barring two natural obstacles, the Palisades 
and the great Hackensack swamp, the land to 



146 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

the westward, in New Jersey, will be the 
broader field for development. 

That part of the United States lying to the 
east of the Hudson river — including the pres- 
ent city of ISTew York, a part of the state of 
JS"ew York and all of Kew England — contains 
only one-eighth of the population of the United 
States. 

It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that 
the future growth of the metropolis of the 
Atlantic seaboard, if unobstructed, will be 
mainly to the west of the Hudson, drawn 
thither by the advantages of closer communi- 
cation with the larger part of the coun- 
try. 

The city will fill and drain the Hackensack 
swamp, which is now the breeding ground of 
malaria and mosquitoes, making that region 
sanitary and wholesome. It will develop the 
Palisades, locating on its lofty plateau, doubt- 
less, the noblest park in the world. 

The district within fifty miles of the heart of 
the present city of New York contains, exclu- 
sive of the surface of the ocean, bays and rivers, 
more than three million acres. If one-third of 
this area be given to parks, streets and busi- 
ness purposes, there are left two million acres 
for homes, an average allowance of half an 
acre — a plot eight times the size of the present 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 14T 

standard city lot in ISew York— to 4,000,000 
families, or 20,000,000 people. 

It is evident that there is no insurmountable 
reason, even here in this center of dense popu- 
lation, for abnormal land values, or for the 
crowding of the people. On the face of this 
planet there is room for all. 

Through its income from the public utilities 
which it will own, and the land which it will 
develop, the city will in time become self-sup- 
porting. Taxes will be abolished. Later its 
enormous earnings will force a reduction on 
the charges it will make for public services. 
Perhaps travel on its lines of transit will be- 
come free. 

It will found gymnasiums, baths, schools, 
art galleries and libraries for the people. It 
wiU condemn the land in the old city, which 
has fallen to a more natural value, and open it 
for the palaces of business, education and pleas- 
ure. It will become in time the owner, by 
purchase, of all the land within its limits. 

The city will be clean, wholesome and beauti- 
ful. Its architecture will be noble and inspir- 
ing. It will be a fit abiding place for the men 
and women of the Twentieth Century. 



XXXY. 

PUBLIC ENTERPRISE WILL REBUILD OLD CITIES 
AND CONSTRUCT NEW ONES FOR THE 
PEOPLE. 

NEW YOEK is so cut into by bays and 
broad streams that its growth outward 
has been difficult. Other cities will 
find the transit problem, and hence the land 
question, less complicated. 

Chicago has vast tracts of cheap land near 
her Avhich could be made accessible by compre- 
hensive systems of transportation. Much of 
this adjacent land is better adapted for homes 
and places of business than the present site of 
the city, which is, in the main, flat and 
wet. 

Indeed the older parts of cities, being located 
usually upon rivers and harbors, and frequently 
upon swampy ground, are not noted for whole- 
someness. In some cases these districts were 
badly planned in the beginning, or they grew 
up without a ])lan, the streets being narroAV 
and crooked, the buildings old, inconvenient, 
combustible and insanitary. The fire that 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 149 

sweeps over such a district is usually regarded 
as a public advantage. 

Even in the new western cities which were 
well planned in the beginning, and in which 
the buildings are comparatively modern in 
design, there are few fireproof structures. 

Apparently we are approaching a period in 
the growth of our cities similar to that reached 
by the early settler when he found that he had 
outgrown his log-cabin days, and, impelled by 
the spirit of progress, faced the problem of 
building a better home. Sometimes he aban- 
doned the old site, which was located frequently 
on low ground, near a spring, moving to a 
more elevated and wholesome spot. 

So our cities should be rebuilt. The present 
sites will, in some cases, be forsaken, and pub- 
lic enterprise will plan and build new cities 
better fitted than the old for civilized people. 

The old city, for the advantages of transpor- 
tation, was located on the water. The systems 
of transportation having changed, we now have 
important cities remote from navigable waters, 
even on arid plains and in the mountains. The 
interior cities of the future will be near the cen- 
tral points in population, the sources of produc- 
tion, and the seats of mechanical power. 

Public enterprise will plan and build a perfect 
modern city in the neighborhood of Niagara 



150 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

Falls, which will utilize fully the vast power of 
that cataract. The city of Buffalo, if set free, 
will accomplish this task. There are many 
sites fit for great cities in the West and South 
that are now practically uninhabited. 

That which, in our commercial development, 
has heretofore been left largely to chance and 
accident will become subject to order and de- 
sign. 

The seats of the various industries will be 
carefully planned, due consideration being given 
to their relations to raw materials, to transpor- 
tation and markets. 

Their plants will be as nearly perfect as 
human intelligence can make them. Their 
products will be turned out with the maximum 
of economy. They will be honest products, 
true to their names and brands, there being no 
motive for dishonesty. 

"We will produce more cheaply than ever 
before, and with ever-increasing economy. 
Cheapness, which has sometimes been harm- 
ful, will become wholly beneficial, for extor- 
tion will have disappeared. 



XXXYI. 

THE PEOPLE WILL NOT SEEK REFUGE FPtOM OLD 
FORMS OF OPPRESSION IN NEW FORMS OF 
DESPOTISM. 

A GAIN we are interrupted : 
/\ "• Are you not now advancing on the 

^ ^^ line of the Socialists, who would have 
the state absorb all industries, and become the 
employer of all of the people, assigning each 
man to the task for which, in its judgment, he 
would be best fitted ? " 

Those who are called Socialists hold many 
varying views. Our inquirer has stated cor- 
rectly the policy favored by the extreme sec- 
tion. This plan of action would abolish human 
freedom. 

The system that would organize society into 
a great industrial army, each member being 
assigned to his place by a superior power, 
would be a system of despotism, and a very 
deplorable system of despotism, notwithstand- 
ing the benevolent intentions of those who 
propose it. 

The people will not seek refuge from old 



152 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

forms of oppression in new forms of despotism. 
They will seek immunity from all systems 
which limit man's freedom to move, aspire or 
act as he pleases, so long as he infringes upon 
the rights of no other man. 

When the Coming Democracy shall have 
arrived, our people will be more free, rather 
than less free, than they now are. Each man 
will choose in freedom his vocation. He may 
work in the public service or in the field of 
private enterprise. He may toil for himself 
or for another. He will be the more free in 
having better opportunities, and in the ability 
to secure the full results of his own labor. 

The state should acquire for the public bene- 
fit only those industries and things which are 
clearly monopolizable in their nature, and nota- 
bly the urban and suburban land, and the prop- 
erty of the great trusts. The industries open 
to free competition should be in no sense in- 
terfered with by the state. They should be 
encouraged and maintained. 

Free competition, as has already been shown, 
prevents extortion. Under free competition 
men get only what they earn. It is a power- 
ful stimulus to industry, enterprise, invention 
and all forms of progress. It is a regulator of 
inconceivable value in human affairs. 

It is the policy of the trusts to wage an 



THE COMING DEMOCEACT. 153 

aggressive warfare upon free competition, and 
to subjugate industries which, under free and 
natural conditions, would respond to the influ- 
ence of competition. 

The state should pursue the opposite policy. 
It should restore to freedom all industries that 
are in their nature competitive. 

Many industries now moving hopelessly to- 
ward absorption by monopoly may be saved 
from this fate. We may conceive that another 
step in the evolution of the ' ' great store ' ' may 
restore it to the influence of competition. A 
city may build immense market-houses. One 
may be for the book market, another for the 
shoe market, another for the hat market, and 
others for millinery, clothing, furniture, and 
so forth. 

Spaces in the book market would be leased 
to dealers who would display and sell their 
goods in free competition with each other. In 
such case the advantages of the great empo- 
rium, of the large scale in business, could be 
maintained without destroying the small in- 
dustries, and by bringing the latter under the 
closer influence of competition. And what 
would be practicable in the book industry 
would be practicable in other industries. 

It is possible also that many small manufac- 
turing industries, now likely to be monopo- 



154 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

lized, could be saved by the construction of 
large and convenient power houses, in which 
each could rent a space fitted for its needs. 

The decentralization of industries should be 
encouraged by the state whenever such a move- 
ment is in harmony with natural law. 



XXXYII. 

EXTORTION AND MONOPOLY WILL CEASE— MAN 
WILL GET WHAT HE EARNS ; NO MORE AND 
NO LESS. 

U]!^DEE the Coming Democracy public 
and private enterprise will work to- 
gether harmoniously, profit being 
wholly eliminated in the one, and deprived of 
the possibility of extortion in the other, ^o 
unfair tribute will be exacted between the pro- 
ducer and the consumer. 

The old systems by which exchange levies 
many forms of extortion and unnecessary 
charges, in handling goods, will disappear. 
Commerce will become free; exchanges will be 
for full and perfect value received. 

The product of the farmer's acre will ex- 
change for its complete equivalent in the fruits 
of other men's toil, while all other forms of 
human industry will exchange for their equiva- 
lents. 

Equity in exchange will stimulate man's en- 
deavor to the highest. 

Cheapness will be the result of improved 



156 THE COMING DEMOCEACY. 

methods, and not of the oppression of labor. 
Back of all honest systems of production and 
exchange there is but one thing — that is 
labor. 

In the final analysis of commerce, man has 
nothing to sell but labor, and he can buy noth- 
ing but labor. Potatoes and paintings, bread 
and boolis, are only labor prepared for the 
market. 

Under the better systems there will be no 
impediment to the free exchange of labor, the 
only commodity that man can really buy or 
sell. In this free market there will be no 
incentive to ^^bull" labor or to ^^bear" 
labor. 

The relative value of labor will be deter- 
mined, as of old, by its quality. Intelligent 
labor will be worth more than ignorant labor. 
The labor of one who can paint a great picture, 
or manage a large industry, will be worth 
much more than the labor of him who can 
only lift or pull or dig. 

All of the advantages of machinery, of im- 
proved methods, of the large scale in business, 
of economy in exchange, will go, as they shoukl 
go in fairness, to labor — to the whole people, 
for all of us who are not drones are laborers. 
Each man will get what he fairly earns ; he is 
entitled to no more, he should receive no less. 



THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 157 

Overgrown fortunes will disappear with the 
systems of extortion and monopoly which have 
produced them. Poverty will also disappear, 
save as the result of indolence, or of physical 
or mental misfortune. 



XXXVIII. 

WE SHALL NO LONGER TRANSMIT CARE AND 
FEAR TO OUR UNBORN CHILDREN— PEACE, 
FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE. 

THE standard of comfort will be greatly 
advanced among the plain people, as 
the earning power of their labor in- 
creases. They will live no longer in vile tene- 
ments and hovels. They will aspire to better 
things. 

The man now called poor will acquire a com- 
fortable home, with a bath, and good beds, 
and tidy furniture, and even a piano — for these 
things will be marvelously cheap. He and his 
folks will be well-clothed. Rags and tatters 
will go to the junkshops. His hours of labor 
will no longer be exhausting. His spine will 
not be curved by toil at forty. He may stand 
as straight as any other man, and he need fear 
no man. 

Travel will be very cheap when the public 
railways and steamship lines are run at cost. 
It has been estimated that the actual cost of 
transporting passengers from Isew York to 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 159 

Chicago, when the railroads are unified under 
public control, need not be more than two 
dollars for each passenger. 

Those who are now poor will be able to see 
something of the great world of which before 
they have only heard. Even the common peo- 
ple shall have their vacations. They shall visit 
their kindred, even in far places, and grasp the 
hands of the old friends from whom they have 
been long separated. 

The men and women of the wide prairies 
and plains shall journey to the East to see the 
beauties and wonders of its cities, to breathe 
the sweet air of its mountains, to behold the 
majesty of the sea. They shall go on even to 
Europe, to see old things with new eyes, to 
revel in the verdure of England, and in the 
quaintness of the Old World life. 

The plain people of the East shall travel to 
the great West to know and understand the 
larger and stronger part of the nation, to won- 
der at its fertility, and to marvel over its great 
cities, some of which have grown up within 
the memory of men now living. They shall 
be lifted to high elevations in the Eockies, and 
descend to the valleys of our western coast, 
where they shall behold fruits and forests 
which transcend the growths of any other 
land. 



160 THE COMING DEMOCRACY. 

And all shall be refreshed and broadened by 
new sights, new experiences and new thoughts. 

Private wealth shall be less ostentations, but 
the public wealth wiU be substantial, useful 
and imposing. Even now, under the old con- 
ditions, there is no man in ]S"ew York rich 
enough to own a park equal to the public 
parks, a library equal to the public libraries, 
or an art gallery equal to the public collections 
of art. 

In the better future we shall realize the folly 
of being the slaves of the useless things we own 
— of useless books, useless furniture, useless 
bric-a-brac, useless rooms, useless horses, use- 
less houses and useless lands. These useless 
things require useless servants, and the useless 
servants require more useless help to wait on 
them. The rich are the victims of their own 
accumulation of things. 

The best people of the future will live sim- 
ply, and live well. They will refuse to be the 
slaves of things. Ostentation and elaborate 
adornment will be the hallmarks of the vulgar. 
But some of the manifestations of the public 
wealth will be unpressive and even magnifi- 
cent. 

The public parks, arches, fountains, road- 
ways and buildings will be the realizations of 
the dreams of the greatest engineers, architects 



THE COMING DEMOCKACY. 161 

and artists of the world. The public service 
will be elaborate and farreaching. The public 
wealth will be the wealth of all and of each of 
the people, and its utilities will be the servants 
of all and of each. And in this state of affairs 
no reasonable man will mourn the absence of 
enormous private fortunes. 

Business having become honest and just, we 
shall now have small practice in lying and in 
deception. 

The dread of poverty, the fear of want, the 
anxieties connected with the problem of living 
in comfort, or of living at all, which beset us 
in youth and follow us to the grave, shall pass 
away. 

We shall no longer transmit care and fear 
to our unborn children. "We shall taste of the 
joys of real peace, of real freedom and of real 
independence. 

Our children shall grow taller and stronger. 
Their lungs shall have more power, their voices 
more resonance, their eyes more light. We 
shall begin to grow a noble race. 

We shall mount to higher and better planes. 
We shall aspire to be foremost in maintaining 
peace, and in all of the arts, courtesies and 
equities of civilization. We shall excel Eome 
in her days of triumph, and Britain in the 
maximum of her glory. We shall expand 



162 THE COMING DEMOCRACY, 

through setting free and employing the ener- 
gies of our whole people. We shall build an 
empire more powerful and magnificent than a 
conqueror has ever dreamed of — the first King- 
dom of Honesty, the first Empire of Justice I 



THE COMING DEMOCRACY 

By ORLANDO J. SMITH 

"Will be mailed postpaid, bound in paper, for 
50 cents ; in cloth for One Dollar. 

The Branduk Company 

330 Broadway, New York 



A SHORT VIEW 
OF GREAT QUESTIONS 



*^If a Man Die, Shall He Live Again 9^* Creation and 
Annihilation Are Unknown to Science. 



By ORLANDO J. SMITH. 



A permanent contribution to literature.— JbTin Clark Rvdjpath. 

Dull indeed must be the spirit which will not receive an im- 
pulse toward better things from this book. 

—Springfield (Mass.) News. 

No one can rise from the perusal of this book without enlarged 
mental and eternal vision.— Albany Press. 

The argument is sane, frank and elea,r.— Pittsburg Leader. 

A small book containing a great amount of wisdom beauti- 
fully expressed.— ^ibany Times-Union. 

The author's theories are well written, and his argument has 
no touch of the pedagogue or of the modern man of mystery. 

—Denver Republican. 

A book for thinkers to read.— Iowa State Register. 

It bears a message that is altogether wholesome— at times 
startling.— ^tZania Saturday Review. 

No other work is now recalled wherein such tremendous 
themes are handled with so much fearless compactness of state- 
ment.— C/iicofifo Chronicle. 

A vast amount of food for thought.— Savannah. News. 

I have read and studied hundreds of volumes on the various 
beliefs of man, finding occasionally scattering crumbs of spiritual 
comfort. It remains for " A Short View of Great Questions" to 
fully, reasonably and satisfactorily settle my mind on the subject. 
I require no better Bible.— Dr. L. M. Taylor, Washington, D. C. 

It Is crowded with much evidence of sincere thought. 

—Kansas City Journal. 
A remarkable book.— Bt/#alo Eocpress. 

Much of it is really eloquent. There are many sentences in It 
that would be good to copy and pin upon the wall where the eye 
could rest upon them frequently.— EZi^a Archard Conner, 



It bears the impress of a strong personality, a vigorous, virile 
manhood which forces us to admire the writer and wish that we 
possessed a larger percentage of his type. His style is crisp and 
direct, simple in extreme, without flourish or lavish adornments. 
He is too earnest to he rhetorical. 

—Chicago Reform Advocate (Hebrew). 

The best appeal to the higher reason for the immortality of the 
soul.— F. A. Mitchel. 

No enlightened person could read this work without feeling 
impelled towards goodness and repelled from evil. 

—Herald of the Oolden Age, Ilf racombe, England. 

A book with a sermon, or several sermons, on every page. 

—2716 Metaphysical Magazine. 

Though philosophical, the book is not cold and dry. It is a 
profound study, gracefully reported in plain English. It is a 
book that will comfort any one to read. By logic that cannot be 
gainsaid, it adds to the hope of all who think. 

—Kansas City Times. 

The writer is a deep thinker.— Detroit Journal. 

It shows what common sense can do with the idea of the im- 
mortality of the soul.— Howa/rd Fielding. 

The book is full of ideas that shake Materialism. 

—Troy Standard. 

Major Smith has given us the results of a manifestly deep and 
sincere consideration of the greatest problems that can occupy 
the human mind.-Beview of Reviews. 

His meaning is not buried under mystical phrases, nor tangled 
in a maze of tortuous reasoning.— Grand Rapids Press. 

The author's arguments are marked by ability and keen 
logic— Baitimore Herald. 

Its opening chapter grapples the reader's soul as with hooks 
of steel, and its succeeding pages hold him spellbound to the 
end.— Revillo Item. 

A little volume ti'eating grave queries in a clever and brilliant 
manner.— Chicago News. 



Mailed postpaid, bound in paper, for 25 cents; 
in doth for 50 cents, 

THE BRANDUR COMPANY 

320 Broadway, New York 



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